Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/229

 every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the banks of the Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of several days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. I have still a lively recollection of the pleasant effects which I once experienced from a diet of fresh tapir meat for a few days, after having been brought to a painful state of bodily and mental depression by a month's scanty rations of fish and farinha.

We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega made from American flour brought from Pará, but it was sold at ninepence a pound. I was once two years without tasting wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the gradual deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper Amazons. Mandioca meal is a poor, weak substitute for bread; it is deficient in gluten, and consequently cannot be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, but is obliged to be roasted in hard grains in order to keep any length of time. Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in a very few hours. A superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca (Manihot Aypi); it is generally made with a mixture of the starch of the root, and is therefore a much more wholesome article of food than the ordinary sort which, on the Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been extracted by soaking in water. When we could get neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom