Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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At Javita A Salt Is Fabricated By The Incineration Of The
Spadix And Fruit Of The Palm-Tree Seje Or Chimu.
This fine palm-tree,
which abounds on the banks of the Auvana, near the cataract of
Guarinumo, and between Javita and the Cano Pimichin, appears to be a
new species of cocoa-tree.
It may be recollected, that the fluid
contained in the fruit of the common cocoa-tree is often saline, even
when the tree grows far from the sea shore. At Madagascar salt is
extracted from the sap of a palm-tree called ciro. Besides the spadix
and the fruit of the seje palm, the Indians of Javita lixiviate also
the ashes of the famous liana called cupana, which is a new species of
the genus paullinia, consequently a very different plant from the
cupania of Linnaeus. I may here mention, that a missionary seldom
travels without being provided with some prepared seeds of the cupana.
This preparation requires great care. The Indians scrape the seeds,
mix them with flour of cassava, envelope the mass in plantain leaves,
and set it to ferment in water, till it acquires a saffron-yellow
colour. This yellow paste dried in the sun, and diluted in water, is
taken in the morning as a kind of tea. The beverage is bitter and
stomachic, but it appeared to me to have a very disagreeable taste.
On the banks of the Niger, and in a great part of the interior of
Africa, where salt is extremely rare, it is said of a rich man, "he is
so fortunate as to eat salt at his meals." This good fortune is not
too common in the interior of Guiana.
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