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Show AN OTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 157 hut , the clay ball being piled together in pyramidal heaps. The very intelligent monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid (who lived twelve years among the e Indians), assured us that one of them would eat from three quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter in a day. According to the accounts which the Otomacs themselves give, this earth forms their principal subsistence during the rainy sea on, though they eat at the same time occasionally, when they can obtain it, a lizard, a small fish, or a fern root. They have such a predilection for the clay, that even in the dry season, when they can obtain plenty of fish, they eat a little earth after their meals every day as a kind of dainty. These men have a dark copper-brown complexion, and unpleasing Tartar features. They are fat, but not large-bellied. The Franciscan monk who lived among them as a missionary, assured us that he could perceive no alteration in their health during the earth-eating season. The simple facts are therefore as follows: The Indians eat large quantities of earth without injury to their health; and they themselves regard the earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, i. e. they feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that for a considerable time; and they attribute this to the earth or clay, and not to the other scanty articles of subsistence which they now and then obtain in addition. If you inquire of an Otomac about his winter provision (in tropical South America the rainy season is usually called winter), he points to the heaps of clay balls stored in his hut. But these simple facts by no means determine the questions, whether the clay be really an alimentary substance? whether earths be capable of assimilation? or whether they merely serve to appease hunger by distending the stomach? I cannot pretend to decide these questions. (Rei. hist. t. ii. pp. 618-G20.) It is curious that the usually credulous and uncritical Father Gumilla positively denies the earth-eating as such. (Historia del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr. 1791, t. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the balls of clay had maizemeal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno, and our friend and travelling companion, the lay brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was lost at sea off the Coast of Africa with part of our collections, both assured us that the Otomacs never mix: crocodile-fat with the clay; and of the meal said to 14 |