Note 2 — LETTER XXVII.

To-day, you cannot afford beef—to-morrow, are you sure that you will be still able to afford bones? If things are to go on thus, and you are to study economy to the utmost, I can beat the author of the penny cookery book even on that ground. What say you to this diet of the Otomac Indians; persons quite of our present English character? “They have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing. They are men of a very robust constitution, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. While the waters of the Orinoco are low, they subsist on fish and turtles, but at the period of its inundations, (when the fishing ceases) they eat daily, during some months, three quarters of a pound of clay, slightly hardened by fire”2—(probably stewable in your modern stoves with better effect).—“Half, at least” (this is Father Gumilla’s statement, quoted by Humboldt) “of the bread of the Otomacs and the Guamoes is clay—and those who feel a weight on their stomach, purge themselves with the fat of the crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to continue to eat pure earth.” “I doubt”—Humboldt himself goes on, “the manteca de caiman being a purgative. But it is certain that the Guamoes are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh, of the crocodile.”