The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (65 page)

The inhabitants of Uruana belong to those nations of the savannahs called wandering Indians (Indios andantes), who, more difficult to civilize than the nations of the forest (Indios del monte),
have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively by hunting and fishing. They are men of very robust constitution; but ill-looking, savage, vindictive, and passionately
fond of fermented liquors. They are omnivorous
animals
in the highest degree; and therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barbarians, have a common saying, “nothing is so
loathsome but that an Ottomac will eat it.” While the waters of the Orinoco and its tributary streams are low, the Ottomacs subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill with surprising
dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow when they appear at the surface of the water. When the rivers swell fishing almost entirely ceases. It is then very difficult to procure fish, which often
fails the poor missionaries, on fast-days as well as flesh-days, though all the young Indians are under the obligation of “fishing for the convent.” During the period of these
inundations, which last two or three months, the Ottomacs swallow a prodigious quantity of earth. We found heaps of earth-balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These
balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which the Ottomacs eat, is a very fine and unctuous clay, of a yellowish grey colour; and, when being slightly baked at the fire, the hardened
crust has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxide of iron which is mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took from the winter-provision of the Indians; and it is a
mistake to suppose that it is steatitic, and that it contains magnesia. Vauquelin did not discover any traces of that substance in it: but he found that it contained more silex than alumina, and
three or four per cent of lime.

The Ottomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently; they choose the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the most unctuous earth, and the smoothest to the touch. I inquired of the
missionary whether the moistened clay were made to undergo that peculiar decomposition which is indicated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen, and which is designated in
every language by the term of
putrefaction
; but he assured us, that the natives neither cause the clay to
rot,
nor do they mingle it with flour of maize, oil of turtle’s eggs,
or fat of the crocodile. We ourselves examined, both at the Orinoco and after our return to Paris, the balls of earth which we brought away with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic
substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when, therefore, you inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists during the two months when
the river is at its highest flood he shows you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his principal food at the period when he can seldom procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming
at the surface of the water. If necessity force the Indians to eat earth during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters of a pound in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice during
the rest of the year. Every day in the season of drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls of
poya,
and mingles a little clay with his other aliment. It is most surprising
that the Ottomacs do not become lean by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Fray Ramon Bueno asserts, that he never remarked any
alteration in the health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the Orinoco.

The Ottomacs during some months eat daily three-quarters of a pound of clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they moisten before swallowing it. It has not been possible to verify hitherto
with precision how much nutritious vegetable or animal matter they take in a week at the same time; but they attribute the sensation of satiety which they feel, to the clay, and not to the wretched
aliments which they take with it occasionally.

No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it may be interesting to examine several analogous phenomena, which I have been able to collect. I observed everywhere within the torrid
zone, in a great number of individuals, children, women, and sometimes even full-grown men, an inordinate and almost irresistible desire of swallowing earth; not an alkaline or calcareous earth, to
neutralize (as it is said) acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a strong smell. It is often found necessary to tie the children’s hands or to confine them, to prevent their
eating earth when the rain ceases to fall. At the village of Banco, on the bank of the river Magdalena, I saw the Indian women who make pottery continually swallowing great pieces of clay. These
women were not in a state of pregnancy; and they affirmed, that earth is an aliment which they do not find hurtful. In other American tribes, people soon fall sick, and waste away, when they yield
too much to this mania of eating earth. We found at the mission of San Borja an Indian child of the Guahiba nation, who was as thin as a skeleton. The mother informed us that the little girl was
reduced to this lamentable state of atrophy in consequence of a disordered appetite, she having refused during four months to take almost any other food than clay. Yet San Borja is only twenty-five
leagues distant from the mission of Uruana, inhabited by that tribe of the Ottomacs, who, from the effect no doubt of a habit progressively acquired, swallow the
poya
without experiencing
any pernicious effects. Father Gumilla asserts, that the Ottomacs take as an aperient, oil, or rather the melted fat of the crocodile, when they feel any gastric obstructions; but the missionary
whom we found among them was little disposed to confirm this assertion. It may be asked, why the mania of eating earth is much more rare in the frigid and temperate than in the torrid zones; and
why in Europe it is found only among women in a state of pregnancy, and sickly children. This difference between hot and temperate climates arises perhaps only from the inert state of the functions
of the stomach, caused by strong cutaneous perspiration. It has been supposed to be observed, that the inordinate taste for eating earth augments among the African slaves, and becomes more
pernicious, when they are restricted to a regimen purely vegetable and deprived of spirituous liquors.

The negroes on the coast of Guinea delight in eating a yellowish earth, which they call
caouac.
The slaves who are taken to America endeavour to indulge in this habit; but it proves
detrimental to their health. They say, that the earth of the West Indies is not so easy of digestion as that of their country. Thibaut de Chanvalon, in his Voyage to Martinico, expresses himself
very judiciously on this pathological phenomenon. “Another cause,” he says, “of this pain in the stomach is, that several of the negroes, who come from the coast of Guinea, eat
earth; not from a depraved taste, or in consequence of disease, but from a habit contracted at home in Africa, where they eat, they say, a particular earth, the taste of which they find agreeable,
without suffering any inconvenience. They seek in our islands for the earth most similar to this, and prefer a yellowish red volcanic tufa. It is sold secretly in our public markets; but this is an
abuse which the police ought to correct. The negroes who have this habit are so fond of
caouac,
that no chastisement will prevent their eating it.”

In the Indian Archipelago, at the island of Java, Labillardière saw, between Surabaya and Samarang, little square and reddish cakes exposed for sale. These cakes called
tanaampo,
were cakes of clay, slightly baked, which the natives eat with relish. The attention of physiologists, since my return from the Orinoco, having been powerfully directed to these phenomena of
geophagy,
M. Leschenault, (one of the naturalists of the expedition to the Antarctic regions under the command of captain Baudin) has published some curious details on the
tanaampo, or
ampo,
of the Javanese. “The reddish and somewhat ferruginous clay,” he says “which the inhabitants of Java are fond of eating occasionally, is spread on a plate of iron, and
baked, after having been rolled into little cylinders in the form of the bark of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of
ampo
and is sold in the public markets. This clay has a peculiar
taste, which is owing to the baking: it is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue, which it dries. In general it is only the Javanese women who eat the
ampo,
either in the time of
pregnancy, or in order to grow thin; the absence of plumpness being there regarded as a kind of beauty. The use of this earth is fatal to health; the women lose their appetite imperceptibly, and
take only with relish a very small quantity of food; but the desire of becoming thin, and of preserving a slender shape, induces them to brave these dangers, and maintains the credit of the
ampo.
" The savage inhabitants of New Caledonia also, to appease their hunger in times of scarcity, eat great pieces of a friable
Lapis ollaris.
Vauquelin analysed this stone, and
found in it, beside magnesia and silex in equal portions, a small quantity of oxide of copper. M. Goldberry had seen the negroes in Africa, in the islands of Bunck and Los Idolos, eat earth of
which he had himself eaten, without being incommoded by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite. These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear very strange. We are struck by
the anomaly of finding a taste, which might seem to belong only to the inhabitants of the most sterile regions, prevailing among races of rude and indolent men, who live in the finest and most
fertile countries on the globe. We saw at Popayan, and in several mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine powder, sold in the public markets to the natives among other articles of
food. This powder, when eaten, is mingled with
coca,
that is, with the leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum. It is well known, that Indian messengers take no other aliment for whole days
than lime and
coca
: both excite the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric juice; they take away the appetite, without affording any nourishment to the body. In other parts of South
America, on the coast of Rio de la Hacha, the Guajiros swallow lime alone, without adding any vegetable matter to it. They carry with them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuffboxes, and as
in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom excited the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators. Lime blackens the teeth; and in the Indian Archipelago, as among several American
hordes, to blacken the teeth is to beautify them. In the cold regions of the kingdom of Quito, the natives of Tigua eat habitually from choice, and without any injurious consequences, a very fine
clay, mixed with quartzose sand. This clay, suspended in water, renders it milky. We find in their huts large vessels filled with this water, which serves as a beverage, and which the Indians call
agua
or
leche de llanka.
⁷

When we reflect on these facts, we perceive that the appetite for clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth is most common among the people of the torrid zone; that it is not always a cause of
disease; and that some tribes eat earth from choice, whilst others (as the Ottomacs in America, and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, in the Pacific) eat it from want, and to appease hunger. A
great number of physiological phenomena prove that a temporary cessation of hunger may be produced though the substances that are submitted to the organs of digestion may not be, properly speaking,
nutritive. The earth of the Ottomacs, composed of alumine and silex, furnishes probably nothing, or almost nothing, to the composition of the organs of man. These organs contain lime and magnesia
in the bones, in the lymph of the thoracic duct, in the colouring matter of the blood, and in white hairs; they afford very small quantities of silex in black hair; and, according to Vauquelin, but
a few atoms of alumine in the bones, though this is contained abundantly in the greater part of those vegetable substances which form part of our nourishment. It is not the same with man as with
animated beings placed lower in the scale of organization. In the former, assimilation is exerted only on those substances that enter essentially into the composition of the bones, the muscles, and
the medullary matter of the nerves and the brain. Plants, on the contrary, draw from the soil the salts that are found accidentally mixed in it; and their fibrous texture varies according to the
nature of the earths that predominate in the spots which they inhabit. An object well worthy of research, and which has long fixed my attention, is the small number of simple substances (earthy and
metallic) that enter into the composition of animated beings, and which alone appear fitted to maintain what we may call the chemical movement of vitality.

IRON RATIONS IN AMAZONIA

Henry Savage Landor

(1867–1924)

Bar Antartica, Everest and the Empty Quarter, twentieth-century explorers have largely had to contrive their challenges. Landor went one better and contrived the hazards.
From Japan, Korea, Central Asia, Tibet, and Africa he returned, always alone, with ever more improbable claims and ever more extravagant tales. The climax came in 1911 with
Across Unknown South
America,
the sort of book that gave exploration a bad name. His route, irrelevant and seldom “unknown”, nevertheless demanded superhuman powers of endurance as when the expedition
marched without food for fifteen days.

W
e started once more across the virgin forest, directing our steps due west. Filippe this time undertook to open the
picada,
while I,
compass in hand, marched directly behind him, Benedicto following me. If I had let him go, he would have described circle after circle upon himself instead of going in a straight line.

From that point our march across the forest became tragic. Perhaps I can do nothing better than reproduce almost word by word the entries in my diary.