transplanted from Africa to America to serve for the maintenance of the negroes, and that if it existed on the continent before the arrival of the Spaniards, it was not, however, known by the natives of the West Indies in the time of Columbus. I am afraid that this celebrated author, who describes, however, accurately enough in general objects of natural history*, has confounded the manioc with the ignames; that is to say, the jatropha with a species of dioscorea. I should wish to know by what authority we can prove that the manioc was cultivated in Guinea from the remotest period. Several travellers have also pretended that the maize grew wild in this part of Africa, and yet it is certain that it was transported there by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Nothing is more difficult to resolve than the problem of the migration of the plants useful to man, especially since communications have become so frequent between all continents. Fernandez de Oviedo, who went in 1513 to the island of Hispaniola, or St. Domingo, and who for more than twenty years inhabited different parts of the new continent, speaks of the manioc as of a very ancient cultivation, and peculiar to America. If, how

This character of Raynal by no means agrees with that given by Mr. Edwards, who says that the descriptions in Raynal are in general no more to be relied on than any description in romance. Trans.

ever, the negro slaves introduced the manioc, Oviedo would himself have seen the commencement of this important branch of tropical agriculture. If he had believed that the jatropha was not indigenous in America, he would have cited the epoqua at which the first maniocs were planted, as he relates inthe greatest detail the first introduction of the sugar cane, the banana of the Canaries, the olive, and the date. Amerigo Vespucci relates in his letter addressed to the Duke of Loraine*, that he saw bread made of the manioc on the coast of Paria in 1497. "The natives," The natives,” says this adventurer, in other respects by no means accurate in his recital, "know nothing of our corn and our farinaceous grains; they draw their principal subsistence from a root which they reduce into meal, which some of them call jucha, others chambi, and others igname." It is easy to discover the word jucca in jucha. As to the word igname, it now means the root of the dioscorea alata, which Columbust describes under the name of ages, and of which we shall afterwards speak. The natives of Spanish Guayana who do not acknowledge the dominion of the Europeans have cultivated the manioc from the remotest antiquity. Running out of provisions in repassing the rapids of the Orinoco, on our return from the Rio Negro we applied to the tribe of Piraoas + Ibidem.

* Grynæus, p. 215.

Indians, who dwell to the east of the Maypures, and they supplied us with jatropha bread. There can therefore remain no doubt that the manioc is a plant of which the cultivation is of a much earlier date than the arrival of the Europeans and Africans into America.

The manioc bread is very nutritive, perhaps on account of the sugar which it contains, and a viscous matter which unites the farinaceous molecules of the cassava. This matter appears to have some analogy with the Caoutchouc, which is so common in all the plants of the groupe of the tithymaloides. They give to the cassava a circular form. The disks, which are called turtas, or xauxau in the old language of Haity, have a diameter of from five to six decimetres, or three millimetres of thickness. The natives, who are much more sober than the whites, generally eat less than half a kilogramme‡ of manioc per day. The want of gluten mixed with the amylaceous matter, and the thinness of the bread, render it extremely brittle and difficult of transportation. This inconvenience is particularly felt in long navigations. The fecula of manioc grated, dried, and smoked, is almost inalterable. Insects and worms never attack it, and every traveller knows in equinoxial America the advantages of the couaque.

* From 19.685 inches to 23.622 inches. Trans. †.118 of an inch. Trans. About a pound. Trans.

It is not only the fecula of the juca amarga which serves for nourishment to the Indians, they use also the juice of the root, which in its natural state is an active poison. This juice is decomposed by fire. When kept for a long time in ebullition it loses its poisonous properties gradually as it is skimmed. It is used without danger as a sauce, and I have myself frequently used this brownish juice, which resembles a very nutritive bouillon. At Cayenne it is thickened to make cabiou, which is analogous to the souy brought from China, and which serves to season dishes. From time to time very serious accidents happen when the juice has not been long enough exposed to the heat. It is a fact very well known in the islands, that formerly a great number of the natives of Haity killed themselves voluntarily by the raw juice of the root of the juca amarga. Oviedo relates, as an eyewitness, that these unhappy wretches, who, like many African tribes, preferred death to involuntary labour, united together by fifties to swallow at once the poisonous juice of the jatropha. This extraordinary contempt of life characterises the savage in the most remote parts of the globe.

Reflecting on the union of accidental circumstances which have determined nations to this or that species of cultivation, we are astonished to

* Aublet Hist. des Plantes de la Guyane Françoise, tom. ii.

see the Americans, in the midst of the richness of their country, seek in the poisonous root of a tithymaloidthesame amylaceous substance which other nations have found in the family of gramina, in bananas, asparagus (dioscorea alata), aroides (arum macrorrhizen. Dracontium polyphillum), solana, lizerons (convolvulus batatas, c. chrysorhizus), narcissi (tacca pinnatifida), polygonoi (p.fagopyrum), urticæ (artocarpus), legumens and arborescent ferns (cycas circinalis). We ask why the savage who discovered the jatropha manihot did not reject a root of the poisonous qualities of which a sad experience. must have convinced him before he could discover its nutritive properties? But the cultivation of the juca dulce, of which the juice is not deleterious, preceded perhaps that of the juca amarga, from which the manioc is now taken. Perhaps also the same people who first ventured to feed on the root of the jatropha manihot had formerly cultivated plants analogous to the arum and the dracontium, of which the juice is acrid, without being poisonous. It was easy to remark, that the fecula extracted from the root of an aroid is of a taste so much the more agreeable, as it is carefully washed to deprive it of its milky juice. This very simple consideration would naturally lead to the idea of expressing the fecula, and preparing it in the same manner as the manioc. We can conceive that a people who knew how to dulcify the roots of an aroid could under