When a large quantity of fish is taken which is intended for sale the natives preserve it with salt, but if it be destined for home consumption they usually smoke it, particularly the sabalo and lisa, which are very fat. One of the methods of cooking fish, and which is practised here, is exceedingly good, preferable, I think, to any other. After the fish is cleaned it is seasoned with a little salt, and the pods of green capsicum; it is then rolled up in a piece of plantain, or vijao leaf, and laid among the hot embers, or buried among the hot ashes; when sufficiently done it is eaten off the leaf, and is remarkably delicate, all the gravy and flavour of the fish having been preserved by the leaf; cooked in this manner it is called pandao.
The yucas, camotes, and yams cultivated at Esmeraldas and in the neighbourhood are the finest I ever saw. It is not uncommon for one of these roots to weigh upwards of twenty pounds. At one place I saw a few plants of the yuca that had stood upwards of twenty years, the owner having frequently bared the bottom of the plants and taken the ripe roots, after which, throwing up the earth again and allowing a sufficient time for new roots to grow, a continual succession of this excellent nutritious food was procured.
The palmito supplies the place of many of our European vegetables, and is certainly far superior to the finest cabbage I ever ate. It is particularly white, tender, and delicate, and greatly resembles the sea kale. To procure them the top of a palm is cut down and opened, and the white core or leaves are taken out, which constitute what is often termed by travellers the cabbage, and the tree is known by the name of the cabbage tree. As there is an abundance of coco-nut palms in the neighbourhood, I one day had a tree cut down, and the palmetto taken out; it measured four feet nine inches long, and eighteen inches in circumference; when boiled it exceeded any vegetable I ever tasted; it was perfectly white, tender, and delicately flavoured.
Tobacco is cultivated here, and it is of an excellent quality: it is not preserved in the leaf, but twisted into a small roll, and made into parcels of about twenty ounces each, which sell from a quarter to half a dollar the bundle: it finds a very ready market at Quito. Owing to the expences of the administration of the royal rent or monopoly of tobacco at Quito, the president and officers of the revenue declared it a free trade. This news was welcomed by the natives with joy, and should the newly constituted authorities allow it to remain free from restrictions, its produce will be the source of great riches to the inhabitants of this part of the country.
MALE & FEMALE INDIANS OF THE MALABA TRIBE.
The small quantity of cocoa that is grown in the province of Esmeraldas is of the finest quality, and considered by many amantes del cacao to be equally as good as the royal bean of Socomusco. A letter from the governor of the mint at Mexico to Don Juan de Larrea was shewn to me at Quito, stating, that a sample of the Esmeraldas cocoa having been sent to him, the quality was so highly approved, that he and his friends should be willing to purchase any quantity at twenty-five dollars the arobo. At the same time the Guayaquil cocoa was selling at three and a half dollars, and the best Caracas at five. The bean of the Esmeraldas cocoa is very small compared with that of Guayaquil, not being above one-third of the size: it is of a bright orange colour, and very heavy from the large quantity of sebaceous matter which it contains. The chocolate made from it preserves the same golden appearance, and is extremely delicious. Another kind of cocoa is found here, called moracumba; it is never cultivated by the natives, growing wild in the woods: the tree is considerably larger than that of the theobroma cacao, and has a very different appearance; but the pods grow to the stem and large branches in the same manner, and have the same appearance as the other; the beans under the brown husk are composed of a white solid matter, almost like a lump of hard tallow. The natives take a quantity of these and pass a piece of slender cane through them, and roast them, when they have the delicate flavour of the cocoa. I have also seen them bruise the bean after it had been well dried, and use the substance instead of tallow in their lamps. This kind of cocoa, which I consider a new variety, will undoubtedly when more known be mixed with the dry cocoa of Guayaquil and other places, to which it will be a very great improvement.
The occupation of the male part of the inhabitants consists in hunting, fishing, and attending to their small plantations. Their maize is not of the best quality, the grain is hard, and scarcely repays the care of the planter, for cultivator I cannot call him. All the labour requisite is merely to search for a piece of land unshaded by trees, or to cut down a portion of these, plant the grain, observe when the young cobs begin to appear, protect the plantation against the depredation of the monkeys, agutis, and parrots, till the grain be ripe, and then to harvest it: this is generally done about eleven weeks after the seed is put into the ground. Four crops may be produced in one year, without either ploughing or harrowing or scarcely any other labour. It is thus that the bountiful hand of providence dispenses gifts in a country whose climate does not suit hard labour, a blessing which the inhabitants of colder regions do not enjoy. But they who choose may call the effects produced by these gifts "the habitual indolence of the people," without contrasting the sterility of the soil and climate of one country with the fertility of that of another.
The females at Esmeraldas are generally occupied in their household concerns; however they assist in the labour of the plantations, and usually accompany their husbands when fishing or hunting calls them far from their home: in the canoes the women usually take the paddles when proceeding down a stream; but they seldom or never use the pole, palanca, when ascending. Although they assist the men in what may be called their department, the reverse never happens, and a man would consider himself degraded should he add a piece of wood to the fire, assist in unlading a canoe of plantains, in distilling rum, or perform any office connected with household concerns. I have seen a man and his wife arrive at their dwelling with a cargo of plantains, camotes, &c.; the man would step ashore, carrying his lance, throw himself into a hammock, leave his wife to unload the canoe, and wonder at the same time that his dinner was not ready, yet he would not stir either hand or foot to hasten it.
The natives of Esmeraldas, Rio Verde, and Atacames, are all zambos, apparently a mixture of negroes and indians; indeed the oral tradition of their origin is, that a ship, having negroes on board, arrived on the coast, and that having landed, they murdered a great number of the male indians, kept their widows and daughters, and laid the foundation of the present race. If this were the case, and it is not very improbable, the whole of the surrounding country being peopled with indians, it produces a striking instance of the facility with which an apparently different tribe of human beings is produced, for the present Esmeraldenos are very different in their features, hair, colour, and shape, to the chino, or offspring of a negro and an indian; these are commonly short and lusty, of a very deep copper colour, thick hair, neither lank nor curled, small eyes, sharpish nose, and well-shaped mouth; whereas the Esmeraldenos are tall, and rather slender, of lightish black colour, different from that called copper colour, have soft curly hair, large eyes, nose rather flat, and thick lips, possessing more of the negro than of the indian, which may be partly accounted for by the male parents having been originally negroes; and the children, as I have already observed, preserve more of the colour of the father than of the mother.