The polar and tropical worlds : a description of man and nature in the polar and equatorial regions of the globe . aise and make his flour for a year. If hechooses to bake his years supply of bread at once, another ten days is quite enough;so that the labor of twenty days will give him food for a year. This is on the sup- 554 THE TROPICAL WORLD. position that he happens to own sago trees. If he does not, he can buy one standingfor two dollars. As the price of a mans labor in this region is estimated at ten centsa day, the cost of food ready cooked for a man is four dollars a year. Yet, unaccou
The polar and tropical worlds : a description of man and nature in the polar and equatorial regions of the globe . aise and make his flour for a year. If hechooses to bake his years supply of bread at once, another ten days is quite enough;so that the labor of twenty days will give him food for a year. This is on the sup- 554 THE TROPICAL WORLD. position that he happens to own sago trees. If he does not, he can buy one standingfor two dollars. As the price of a mans labor in this region is estimated at ten centsa day, the cost of food ready cooked for a man is four dollars a year. Yet, unaccount-able as it seems to us, the natives, with these great natural flour-barrels, (only thateach contains three of our barrels,) standing around them, suffer from notices the same thing on the Amazon. If the people of any country reallyprefer to go hungry ratner than spend three weeks of the year in weeding a plantain-field, or preparing sago, there seems no good reason why any one should interferewith their way of enjoying themselves. By all means let them take their siesta andstarve A SIESTA ON THE AMAZON. Life and death are strangely blended in the Cassava or Mandioca root {Tatrophamanihot). The juice a rapidly destructive poison, the meal a nutritious and agreeablefood, which, in tropical America, and chiefly in Brazil, forms a great part of thepeoples sustenance. The hight to which the cassava attains varies from four to sixfeet. It rises by a slender, woody, knotted stalk, furnished with alternate palmatedleaves, and springs from a tough branched woody root, the slender collateral fibresof which swell into those farinaceous, parsnip-like masses, for which alone the plant iscultivated. It requires a dry soil, and is not found at a greater elevation than 2,000feet above the level of the sea. It is propagated by cuttings, which very quickly takeroot, and in about eight months from the time of their being planted the tubers willgenerally be in a fit
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