The saliva with which the boa covers its prey tends to promote rapid decomposition. The muscular flesh is rendered gelatinously soft under its action, so that the animal is able to force entire limbs of its slain victim through its swelling throat. The Creoles call the giant boa Tragavenado (stag-swallower), and fabulously relate that the antlers of a stag which could not be swallowed by the snake have been seen fixed in its throat. I have frequently observed the boa constrictor swimming in the Orinoco, and in the smaller forest streams, the Tuamini, the Temi, and the Atabapo. It holds its head above water like a dog. Its skin is beautifully speckled. It has been asserted, that the animal attains a length of 48 feet, but the longest skins which have as yet been carefully measured in Europe do not exceed from 21 to 23 feet. The South American boa (a Python) differs from the East Indian.[[HI]]
[50]. p. 20—“Living on gums and earth.”
It is currently reported throughout the coasts of Cumana, New Barcelona, and Caracas (which the Franciscan monks of Guiana are in the habit of visiting on their return from the missions,) that there are men living on the banks of the Orinoco who eat earth. On the 6th of June, 1800, on our return from the Rio Negro, when we descended the Orinoco in thirty-six days, we spent the day at the mission inhabited by these people (the Otomacs). Their little village, which is called La Concepcion de Uruana, is very picturesquely built against a granite rock. It is situated in 7° 8′ 3″ north lat.; and according to my chronometrical determination, in 67° 18′ west longitude. The earth which the Otomacs eat, is an unctuous, almost tasteless clay, true potter’s earth, of a yellowish grey colour, in consequence of a slight admixture of oxide of iron. They select it with great care, and seek it in certain banks on the shores of the Orinoco and Meta. They distinguish the flavour of one kind of earth from that of another; all kinds of clay not being alike acceptable to their palate. They knead this earth into balls measuring from four to six inches in diameter, and bake them before a slow fire, until the outer surface assumes a reddish colour. Before they are eaten, the balls are again moistened. These Indians are mostly wild, uncivilized men, who abhor all tillage. There is a proverb current among the most distant of the tribes living on the Orinoco, when they wish to speak of anything very unclean, “so dirty that the Otomacs eat it.”
As long as the waters of the Orinoco and the Meta are low, these people live on fish and turtles. They kill the former with arrows, shooting the fish as they rise to the surface of the water with a skill and dexterity that has frequently excited my admiration. At the periodical swelling of the rivers, the fishing is stopped, for it is as difficult to fish in deep river water as in the deep sea. It is during these intervals, which last from two to three months, that the Otomacs are observed to devour an enormous quantity of earth. We found in their huts considerable stores of these clay balls piled up in pyramidal heaps. An Indian will consume from three-quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter of this food daily, as we were assured by the intelligent monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid, who had lived among these Indians for a period of twelve years. According to the testimony of the Otomacs themselves, this earth constitutes their main support in the rainy season. In addition, they however eat, when they can procure them, lizards, several species of small fish, and the roots of a fern. But they are so partial to clay, that even in the dry season, when there is an abundance of fish, they still partake of some of their earth-balls, by way of a bonne bouche after their regular meals.
These people are of a dark, copper-brown colour, have unpleasant Tartar-like features, and are stout, but not protuberant. The Franciscan who had lived amongst them as a missionary, assured us that he had observed no difference in the condition and well-being of the Otomacs during the periods in which they lived on earth. The simple facts are therefore as follows:—The Indians undoubtedly consume large quantities of clay without injuring their health; they regard this earth as a nutritious article of food, that is to say, they feel that it will satisfy their hunger for a long time. This property they ascribe exclusively to the clay, and not to the other articles of food which they contrive to procure from time to time in addition to it. If an Otomac be asked what are his winter provisions—the term winter in the torrid parts of South America implying the rainy season—he will point to the heaps of clay in his hut. These simple facts do not, however, by any means decide the questions: whether clay can actually be a nutritious substance; whether earths can be assimilated in the human body; whether they only serve as ballast; or merely distend the walls of the stomach, and thus appease the cravings of hunger? These are questions which I cannot venture to decide.[[HJ]] It is singular, that Father Gumilla, who is generally so credulous and uncritical, should have denied the fact of earth being eaten by and for itself.[[HK]] He maintains that the clay-balls are largely mixed with maize-flour, and crocodile’s fat. But the missionary Fray Ramon Bueno, and our friend and fellow-traveller, the lay-brother Fray Juan Gonzales, who perished at sea off the coast of Africa (at the time we lost a portion of our collections), both assured us, that the Otomacs never mix their clay cakes with crocodile’s fat, and we heard nothing in Uruana of the admixture of flour.
The earth which we brought with us, and which was chemically investigated by M. Vauquelin, is quite pure and unmixed. May not Gumilla, by confounding heterogeneous facts, have intended to allude to a preparation of bread from the long pod of a species of Inga? as this fruit is certainly buried in the earth, in order to hasten its decomposition. It appears to me especially remarkable, that the Otomacs should not lose their health by eating so much earth. Has this tribe been habituated for generations to this stimulus?
In all tropical countries men exhibit a wonderful and almost irresistible desire to devour earth, not the so-called alkaline or calcareous earth, for the purpose of neutralizing acidity, but unctuous, strong-smelling clay. It is often found necessary to shut children up in order to prevent their running into the open air to devour earth after recent rain. The Indian women who are engaged on the river Magdalena, in the small village of Banco, in turning earthenware pots, continually fill their mouths with large lumps of clay, as I have frequently observed, much to my surprise.[[HL]] Wolves eat earth, especially clay, during winter. It would be very important, in a physiological point of view, to examine the excrements of animals and men that eat earth. Individuals of all other tribes, excepting the Otomacs, lose their health if they yield to this singular propensity for eating clay. In the mission of San Borja we found the child of an Indian woman, which, according to the statement of its mother, would hardly eat anything but earth. It was, however, much emaciated, and looked like a mere skeleton.
Why is it that in the temperate and cold zones this morbid eagerness for eating earth is so much less frequently manifested, and is indeed limited almost entirely to children and pregnant women, whilst it would appear to be indigenous to the tropical lands of every quarter of the earth? In Guinea the negroes eat a yellowish earth, which they call caouac; and when they are carried as slaves to the West Indies they even endeavour there to procure for themselves some similar species of food, maintaining that the eating of earth is perfectly harmless in their African home. The caouac of the American islands, however, deranges the health of the slaves who partake of it; for which reason the eating of earth was long since forbidden in the West Indies, notwithstanding which a species of red or yellowish tuff (un tuf rouge jaunâtre) was secretly sold in the public market of Martinique in the year 1751.
“The negroes of Guinea say that in their own country they habitually eat a certain earth, the flavour of which is most agreeable to them, and which does not occasion them any inconvenience. Those who have addicted themselves to the excessive use of caouac are so partial to it, that no punishment can prevent them from devouring this earth.”[[HM]] In the island of Java, between Sourabaya and Samarang, Labillardière saw small square reddish cakes publicly sold in the villages. The natives called them tana ampo (tanah signifies earth in Malay and Javanese); and on examining them more closely, he found that they were cakes made of a reddish clay, and intended for eating.[[HN]] The edible clay of Samarang has recently (1847) beep sent, by Mohnike, to Berlin in the shape of rolled tubes like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It is a fresh-water formation deposited in tertiary limestone, and composed of microscopic polygastrica (Gallionella, Navicula) and of Phytolitharia.[[HO]] The natives of New Caledonia, to appease their hunger, eat lumps as large as the fist of friable steatite, in which Vauquelin detected an appreciable quantity of copper.[[HP]] In Popayan and many parts of Peru calcareous earth is sold in the streets as an article of food for the Indians. This is eaten together with the Coca (the leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum). We thus find that the practice of eating earth is common throughout the whole of the torrid zone among the indolent races who inhabit the most beautiful and fruitful regions of the earth. But accounts have also come from the north, through Berzelius and Retzius, from which we learn, that in the most remote parts of Sweden hundreds of cartloads of earth containing infusoria are annually consumed by the country people as bread-meal, more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity. In some parts of Finland a similar kind of earth is mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells of animalcules, so small and soft, that they break between the teeth without any perceptible noise, filling the stomach without yielding any actual nourishment. Chronicles and archives often make mention during times of war of the employment as food of infusorial earth, which is spoken of under the indefinite and general term of “mountain meal.” Such, for instance, was the case in the Thirty Years’ War, at Camin in Pomerania, Muskau in the Lausitz, and Kleiken in the Dessau territory; and subsequently in 1719 and 1733, at the fortress of Wittenberg.[[HQ]]
[51]. p. 20.—“Images graven in rocks.”