or dead Indians turned to clay to appease the hunger of their living descendants. Thus, if the imagination may trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it stopping a bunghole, may it not also follow this same clay from the bunghole into the veins of a new Alexander?
Richardson states that the above is a kind of pipe-clay. If made into pipes for smoking, Hamlet might argue still further, “may we not trace the dust of the dead Indian, till we find a man smoking his weed from the leg or arm of his great grandfather.”
Clay eating exists in South America, among the Guamos, and by the tribes between the Meta and the Apure. The natives here speak of the custom as one of great antiquity. The Ottomacs are, however, great clay-eaters. Humboldt found amongst them heaps of earth-balls, piled up in pyramid three or four feet high, and these balls five or six inches in diameter. This clay was of a yellowish grey colour, and did not contain magnesia, but silex and alumina, and three or four per cent. of lime, no trace of organic substance, either oily or farinaceous, could be found mixed with it. If the Ottomac is asked what he lives upon during the two months of the inundation of the rivers, he shows you his balls of clayey earth. It is asserted that far from becoming lean at that season, they are, on the contrary, extremely robust.
At the village of Banco, on the Rio Magdalena, the same traveller found Indian women making pottery, who continually swallowed great pieces of clay.
On the coast of Guinea, the negroes eat a yellowish earth, which they call caouac, the taste of which is said to be agreeable, and to cause no inconvenience. When these Africans are carried to the West Indies, they still indulge in the custom, for which purpose Chanvalon states that it is sold in the markets, but that the West-Indian clay does not agree with them so well as that of their native country.
Labillardière saw between Surabaya and Samarang little square reddish cakes, called tanaampo, exposed for sale, which were slightly baked, and eaten with relish.
Leschenault states that the reddish clay (ampo) which the Javanese are fond of eating occasionally, is spread on a plate of iron and baked, after being rolled into little cylinders in the form of cinnamon bark. In this state it is sold in the markets. It has a peculiar taste, which is owing to the baking, is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue. The Javanese women eat the ampo in order to grow thin, the absence of plumpness being there regarded as a kind of beauty.
In times of hunger or scarcity, the savages of New Caledonia eat great pieces of a friable stone, which contains magnesia and silex, with a little oxide of copper.
The African negroes of Bunck and Los Idoles eat a kind of white and friable steatite, or soapstone, from which custom they are said to suffer no inconvenience.
At Popayan and several of the mountainous parts of Peru, finely-powdered lime is sold in the public markets with other articles of food. This powder is, however, generally mixed with the leaves of the coca, and used as a masticatory. In other parts of South America, lime is swallowed alone, the Indians carrying with them a little box of lime, as other people carry their tobacco-box, snuff-box, or siri-box.