Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 677 of 777 - First - Home
Another Substance, Which Is Much More Nutritive, Is
Obtained From The Animal Kingdom:
This is fish-flour (manioc de
pescado).
The Indians throughout the Upper Orinoco fry fish, dry them
in the sun, and reduce them to powder without separating the bones. I
have seen masses of fifty or sixty pounds of this flour, which
resembles that of cassava. When it is wanted for eating, it is mixed
with water, and reduced to a paste. In every climate the abundance of
fish has led to the invention of the same means of preserving them.
Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the fish-bread of the
ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the Persian Gulf and the shores
of the Red Sea.* (* These nations, in a still ruder state than the
natives of the Orinoco, contented themselves with drying the raw fish
in the sun. They made up the fish-paste in the form of bricks, and
sometimes mixed with it the aromatic seed of paliurus (rhamnus), as in
Germany, and some other countries, cummin and fennel-seed are mixed
with wheaten bread.)
At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions, the Indians
who will not be baptized, and who are merely aggregated in the
community, live in a state of polygamy. The number of wives differs
much in different tribes. It is most considerable among the Caribs,
and all the nations that have preserved the custom of carrying off
young girls from the neighbouring tribes. How can we imagine domestic
happiness in so unequal an association?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 677 of 777
Words from 184120 to 184374
of 211397
