Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/230

 without butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return voyage from Pará, where it is imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool. We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at first strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. Sometimes we had milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from each cow was very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat.

Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be had. I was quite surprised at the variety of the wild kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them. Many of these are utterly unknown in the regions nearer the Atlantic; being the peculiar productions of this highly-favoured, and little known, interior country. Some have been planted by the natives in their clearings. The best was the Jabutí-púhe, or tortoise-foot; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous order. It is about the size of an ordinary apple; when ripe the rind is moderately thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of a very rich flavour. Next to this stands the Cumá (Collophora sp.) of which there are two species, not unlike, in appearance, small round pears; but the rind is rather hard, and contains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part is almost as delicious as that of the Jabuti-púhe. The Cumá tree is of moderate height, and grows rather plentifully in the