Spirits are also distilled from an infusion of very ripe bananas in water; this is allowed to ferment, and is strained before it is put into the alembic. Another fermented beverage, as well as spirit, is prepared from the yuca; the root is boiled, reduced to a pulpy substance, and placed in baskets to ferment, in the same manner as the plantains are for the masato; when mixed with water and strained, it is called kiebla, and the spirit distilled from it puichin. The water contained in the coco-nut is also allowed to ferment, but this is seldom drunk, it being considered very unwholesome. Although these people have so many intoxicating liquors, they are not prone to drunkenness.
The food of the inhabitants consists of beef and pork, which is cut into thick slices, salted and smoked. The beef which is fed on gamaloti is good, but that fed on the savanas near to the sea is much better: the hogs are fed on ripe plantains, and become very fat, but the meat is not solid. Fowls are bred in great abundance; they feed well on ripe plantains, and are delicate eating. Besides these, the woods produce game in great abundance. Among the quadrupeds are sainos, tatabras, deer, monkeys, agutis, iguanas, charapas: among the birds, poujis, huacharacas, turkeys, parrots, and wild ducks of several varieties.
The saino, tatabra, and aguti are three varieties of the caira tribe; the first is about two feet high and three feet long, and is slightly covered with coarse black hair; the snout is shorter than that of a pig; it has on its back a soft protuberance, which when opened emits a very offensive musky odour, so much so, that the animal itself rolls about, and places its nose close to the ground, as if to avoid the stench, and its companions immediately desert it. The flesh of this animal, however, is extremely delicate, and by the natives or any other person who has tasted it, it is held in the greatest estimation: to preserve it the natives smoke it in preference to using salt.
The tatabra is smaller than the saino; is very similar to it, but it has no protuberance on its back. The aguti is not so large as a rabbit; it is of a very dark grey colour, and the hind legs are much longer than the fore ones; it generally sits on its haunches like a squirrel, and might be mistaken for one; as well as the other two varieties, however, it has no tail, at least not visible. These two species are easily domesticated, they become very fat, and are good eating.
The monkey which is eaten by the natives is the black long-armed monkey. I objected for a long time to taste it, but seeing the people around me eat it, and hearing them all praise it, I laid aside prejudice, tasted it, and afterwards became so fond of it, that I considered it superior to any kind of meat I had ever eaten. The flesh is similar in colour to mutton, the fat resembles that of pork.
The charapa is a small tortoise, the shell not being above four inches in diameter: the natives generally season all the eatable parts, and put them into the shell, which serves as a stew-pan: the eggs are remarkably delicate, and when stewed with the meat the whole is very savoury.
The natives make use of the lance in killing the saino and tatabra. They usually form parties for the purpose, and never go singly; for although these animals will not attack a man who does not molest them, yet the sainos when provoked are very desperate antagonists, and will attack those who offend them. They make a hollow moaning noise, which leads the natives to their feeding places, when they attack them with their long lances; two or more men stand back to back, surrounded by these poisonous brutes, and kill as many as they judge convenient; they then pierce one on the back, when the rest immediately disperse to avoid the smell. The tatabra is not so furious, and is an easier prey to the huntsman.
During my stay at Esmeraldas I was requested to go into the woods, about a league and a half from the town, to see a great curiosity; not being able to learn what it was, I went, and found the two hind quarters of a full grown jaguar suspended from the trunk of a tree, into which the claws were completely buried; all the fore parts appeared to have been torn away, and fragments of it were scattered on the ground: the sight astonished me, and I was not less surprized at the account which I received from the natives. The jaguar, for the purpose of killing the saino, on which it feeds, rushes on one of a herd, strikes it, and then betakes itself to a tree, which it ascends, and fastening its hind claws into the tree, hangs down sufficiently low to be able to strike the saino with its paws, which having effected in a moment it draws itself up again, to escape being hurt by the enemy. However, it appeared that in this case the jaguar had been incautious, and the saino had caught it by the paw, when the whole herd immediately attacked it, and tore as much of it to pieces as they could reach.
For taking birds the natives use a hollow tube of wood, from five to eight feet long, called a sorbetana, or bodojera, the diameter of the perforation being not more than half an inch; the dart used is called pua, it is about seven or eight inches long, and very slender; at one end a sharp point is cut, and it is notched round so as easily to break off. This point is dipped in some poison, a small quantity of raw cotton is wrapped round the pua, near the point, so as to fill the tube into which it is put; the sportsman then applies his mouth to the tube, gives a smart puff, and the pua is thrown to the distance of a hundred, or a hundred and fifty yards, with an almost unerring certainty against the object marked out, which in a moment falls to the ground and expires. The poison used is brought from Maynas, on the banks of the Marañon, where it is procured from a vegetable. It probably owes its poisonous quality to the quantity of prussic acid which it contains, although it does not possess either the taste or odour of that acid. The activity of this poison is so astonishingly great, that I have seen a monkey while jumping from one tree or branch to another, if wounded with the poisoned point of a pua not larger than a fine needle, fall to the ground before it could reach the adjacent bough; and birds as large as turkeys will fall from their perch without being able to throw themselves on the wing. A small black spot is left in the flesh by the poison, but the whole of the meat is uninjured for food.
The natives use this poison as a purgative, and I was assured by several who have taken it, that it operates very mildly; they always take it in the form of a pill, carefully enveloped in a portion of the pulp of the plantain, to prevent the possibility of its touching the gums, or any lacerated part of the body, as death would almost inevitably be the consequence. The only partial antidote known, when by accident a person is wounded, is to eat a considerable quantity of sugar, and to this the sportsmen have recourse after they have been employed for any considerable length of time with the sorbetana, as sometimes a swelling of the lips is produced, which they suppose to be occasioned by inhaling the contaminated air in the tube. As a defensive weapon the sorbetana and poisoned pua are excellent; in the hands of these people they would commit the greatest havoc, because they might be used in an ambuscade or defile, without any noise or report; and the pua being almost invisible in the air, an army ignorant of such missiles might be destroyed in the same manner as a troop of monkeys, when one of which drops the rest immediately flock to the spot, as if to examine the cause, and one after another become the prey of the hunters.