The coast here abounds with a variety of good fish; the larger ones are mostly taken by spearing.
The Indians have often brought me beef of the mountain-cow, which I found of a very good flavor. I never saw but one young one of that species, and cannot give a very good description of them. The young one I saw, much resembled a young fawn. They are killed by shooting.
Parrots, when cooked, taste much like our wild pigeons, and are taken in abundance by shooting. A few tame ones are kept about the houses, which fly into the shade-trees near the premises, and serve as stool-pigeons to call down the wild flocks that are daily passing over the villages.
The armadilla also inhabits this country, and is considered very palatable food. The guana, resembles the common lizard in shape and color, and is from two to four feet in length, in this country its flesh is considered delicious meat.
The cattle are much larger than those of the United States. They seldom milk the cows, which run in herds, and are not domesticated. Each inhabitant marks his calves when young; and when he wants to kill a beef he shoots one of his own mark. They domesticate but few horses, having scarcely any roads, the country being cut up with lakes, rivers, and creeks, without bridges. The principal travel is performed in canoes. The horses are well formed, but a kind of tick eats the gristle out of their ears, which causes them to fall down on their head, giving them the appearance of lopped eared hogs.
They have abundance of hogs and poultry, which are cheaply fed on cocoa-nuts that grow wild along the sea-coast, and are gathered in large quantities. The first work of the morning, performed by the Indian women, is breaking cocoa-nuts for the hogs, and cracking some for the dogs, then cutting up fine for the poultry. They grate up a large quantity with tin graters, put it in pots and extract the oil, which makes good lard for frying fish; and when it turns rancid becomes very fair lamp oil. Forty cocoa-nuts will produce one gallon of it.
The forests abound with wild hogs of two different species, called Warry and Pecara, having a small tit or navel on their backs. When they are shot the Indians immediately cut out the tit to prevent its scenting the meat. I have ate the flesh of it often, and found it equal to other meat of the pork kind.
Plantain is the principal bread food of the country, and easily cultivated. It also produces yams, cassauder, sweet potatoes or eddies, and many other vegetables; but the natives are too indolent to cultivate them. I lived seven months among them without tasting a mouthful of bread, or even craving it.
I will now give a small extract of Musquitto laws, viz: If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, and it comes to the knowledge of her husband, he takes his gun and goes to the forest where he finds a herd of cattle belonging to the neighborhood; he shoots a good fat bullock and calls on the neighbors to assist him to dress it and convey it home, where he makes a great feast, inviting the man who committed the offence, and all the neighbors to partake with him, when the offender, who is bound by law, pays for the bullock and all is amicably settled.
If a man prevails on another man's wife to leave her husband and live with him, the law compels him to pay a fine of four backs of tortoise-shell, worth six dollars each, amounting to twenty-four dollars, and a receipt in full is verbally acknowledged, without any hard feelings between the parties.