The night fishing was unfavorable, but this morning the fishermen have brought in new species enough to keep Mr. Agassiz and his artist busy for many hours, so that we are likely to pass another night among these hospitable people. I must say that the primitive life of the better class of Indians on the Amazons is much more attractive than the so-called civilized life in the white settlements. Anything more bald, dreary, and uninviting than life in the Amazonian towns, with an attempt at the conventionalisms of civilization, but without one of its graces, I can hardly conceive. This morning my Indian friends have been showing me the various processes to which the Mandioca is subjected. This plant is invaluable to these people. It gives them their farinha,—a coarse kind of flour, their only substitute for bread,—their tapioca, and also a kind of fermented juice called tucupi,—a more questionable blessing, perhaps, since it affords them the means of getting intoxicated. After being peeled, the roots of the mandioca are scraped on a very coarse grater; in this condition they make a moist kind of paste, which is then packed in elastic straw tubes, made of the fibres of the Jacitará Palm (Desmonchus). When her tube, which has always a loop at either end, is full, the Indian woman hangs it on the branch of a tree; she then passes a pole through the lower loop and into a hole in the trunk of the tree, and, sitting down on the other end of the pole, she thus transforms it into a primitive kind of lever, drawing out the tube to its utmost length by the pressure of her own weight. The juice is thus expressed, flowing into a bowl placed under the tube. This juice is poisonous at first, but after being fermented becomes quite harmless, and is then used for the tucupi. The tapioca is made by mixing the grated mandioca with water. It is then pressed on a sieve, and the fluid which flows out is left to stand. It soon makes a deposit like starch, and when hardened they make it into a kind of porridge. It is a favorite article of food with them.