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Show 156 STEPPES AND DESERTS. attain a length of 48 feet; but the largest skins which have as yet been brought to Europe, and carefully measured, do not exceed 21 to 23 feet. The South American boa (which is a Python) differs from the East Indian. On the Ethiopian boa, see Diodor. lib. iii. p. 204, ed. W esseling. (5°) p. 41.-" Using ants, gums, ancl em·th as food." It was a very prevalent report on the coasts of Cumana, New Barcelona, and Caraccas, visited by the Franciscan monks of Guiana on their return from the missions, that there were men on the banks of the Orinoco who ate earth. When, in returning from the Rio Negro, we descended the Orinoco in thirty-six days, we passed the day of the 6th of ,June, 1800, in the Mission inhabited by the earth-eating Otomacs. This little village is called La Concepcion de Uruana, and is very picturesquely situated at the foot of a granite rock. I found its geographical position to be 7° 8' 3" N. lat., and 67° 18' W. long. from Greenwich. The earth which the Otomacs eat is a soft, unctuous clay; a true potter's clay, of a yellowish-gray color, due to a little oxide of iron. They seek for it in particular spots on the banks of the Orinoco and the Meta, and select it with care. They distinguish the taste of one kind of earth from that of another, and do not consider all clays as equally agreeable to eat. They knead the earth into balls of about five or six inches diameter, which they burn or roast by a weak fire until the outside assumes a reddish tint. The balls are re-moistened when about to be eaten. These Indians are generally wild, uncultivated beings, and altogether averse to any kind of tillage. It is a proverb even among the most distant of the nations living on the Orinoco, when speaking of anything very unclean, to say that it is "so dirty, that the Otomacs eat it." As long as the waters of the Orinoco and the Meta are low, these Indians live on fish and river tortoises. They kill the fish with arrows when at the surface of the water, a pursuit in which we have often admired their great dexterity. During the periodical swelling of the rivers, the taking of fish ceases, for it is as difficult to fish in deep river water as in the deep sea. It is in this interval, which is of two or three months' duration, that the Otomacs swallow great quantities of earth. We have found considerable stores of it in their |