WHITEWASH AND CLAY.
“Alexander died. Alexander was buried. Alexander returneth into
dust; the dust is earth: of earth we make loam. And why of that
loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer
barrel?”——_Hamlet._
The fact, at one time doubted, but now established beyond dispute,
that some tribes indulge in the habit of dirt-eating, is one which,
from its singularity, claims notice. The Malayan uses lime as an
ingredient in compounding his favourite masticatory, and the coquero
of the Andes mixes it with his leaves of coca. The Nubians mingle the
saline natron with their quid of tobacco, and the blacks of Gesira
the same material to compound their “bucca.” The Ottamacs and Omaguas
avail themselves of the assistance of shell lime to give pungency to
their intoxicating snuffs. The tribes on the coast of Paria, according
to Gomara, stimulated the organs of taste by caustic lime, as other
races employ tobacco, coca, or betel. In our own days this practice
exists among the Guajiros at the mouth of the Rio de la Hacha. Here the
still uncivilized Indians carry small shells, calcined and powdered,
in a box made from the husk of a fruit. This box is suspended from
their girdle, and serves a variety of purposes. The powder used by
the Guajiros is an article of commerce, as formerly was that of the
Indians of Paria. What could first have induced these people to use by
itself, or other races to mingle with vegetable substances, a mineral
only known to us as a whitewash, or for somewhat similar vulgar uses,
and to metamorphose it into a luxury, is difficult to understand.
We comprehend the value of lime when stirred about in a pail, with
sufficiency of water to reduce it to the consistence of cream, and
then by the aid of a broad flat brush transferred to the ceilings of
our dwellings. We cannot so well comprehend or appreciate the luxury
of rolling it into a pellet, and transferring it to our mouths, as a
whitewash for regions where the curious eye of man does not penetrate.
[Illustration]
The residents at the fur-posts on the Mackenzie River, have a mineral
in use among them, known by the appellation of _white mud_, which
is used for whitewashing, and, when soap is scarce, it supplies the
place of that article for washing clothes. It resembles pipe-clay,
and exists in beds from six to twelve inches in thickness. It is of
a yellowish white colour, sometimes with a reddish tinge. On the
Arkansas also a similar substance has been met with, called _pink
clay_. The clay of the Mackenzie is smooth, and, when masticated, has
a flavour, we are told, resembling the kernel of a hazel nut. Sir
John Richardson obtained some of this clay in his journey to Prince
Rupert’s Land, and had it examined, but could not discover in it any
nutritious properties, or detect the remains of infusorial animalculæ,
such as are found in other edible clays. The natives of the locality
in which this substance is found, eat it in times of scarcity, and
suppose that by its use they prolong their lives. There are certain
physiological reasons known to us whereby we account for fowls, and
other winged bipeds indulging in the singular propensity of swallowing
small pebbles, fragments of lime or mortar, sand and clay; but as
we cannot apply these same arguments to the cases of other “bipeds
without feathers” who indulge in the same propensity, we naturally seek
for some signs of nutritious value in the substance itself. In this
instance the remote probability of its containing decayed animal matter
does not apparently exist, for the microscope detects no infusoria. And
unless we argue, as did Hamlet with his friend Horatio, that in this
clay are the remains of a previous generation, we can scarce account
for its being a good article of food.
“Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;”
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.
In the kingdom of Quito, the Tigua natives eat from choice, and without
any ill consequences, a very fine clay mixed with sand. This clay,
mixed with water, renders it milky. Large vessels filled with this
mixture, called _agua de llanka_, water of clay, or _leche de llanka_,
milk of clay, may be seen in most of their huts, where it serves as a
beverage.
On the banks of the river Kamen-da-Maslo, there is produced a fossil,
or an earthy substance, called in Russian _kamennoye maslo_, stone
butter, which is eaten in various ways, as well by the Russians as the
Tongousi, it is of a yellowish cream colour, and not unpleasant in
taste, but it is forbidden as pernicious in its effects. This earthy
matter is stated to be a fossil, or salt oozing out of rocks, in many
parts of Siberia, but chiefly from those near the river Irtish and
Yenissei. When it is exposed to the air in dry weather it hardens, but
in wet weather it again becomes soft or liquid. The Russian hunters use
it also as a bait. The animals scent it from afar, and are fond of the
smell.
In Germany, the workmen employed in the quarries of sandstone at
Kiffhauser, spread a fine clay upon their bread instead of butter,
which they call _steinbutter_ (stone butter). There is another
substance, called _bergbutter_, or mountain butter, which is a saline
substance produced by the decomposition of aluminous schists.
On the shores of a lake near Urania, in Sweden, is found a deposit,
called by the peasants “mountain meal” (_bergmehl_) which they use,
mixed up with flour, as an article of food. This deposit consists
chiefly of fossil infusoria.
In Finland also, a similar kind of earth is mixed with bread stuff, as
also in parts of Northern Germany in cases of scarcity or necessity.
In Lapland also, this fossil farina has been found, and applied to a
like use. The Tripoli or rotten stone of commerce is an infusorial
earth of this description, composed of fossils of extraordinary minute
dimensions.
A poor man, in the neighbourhood of Dejufors, Sweden, some years since,
found an earth of this description, which had much the appearance of
meal. The people being at that time in a state of privation, and living
upon bark bread, this man took some home, mixed it with rye meal, baked
it into bread, and found it palatable, hereupon there was a general run
upon this earth, and some of it found its way to Stockholm. On analysis
it was found to contain flint and feldspar, finely pulverized with
lime, clay, oxide of iron, and some organic substance resembling animal
matter, and yielding ammonia, and an oil.
Ehrenberg found that a hill in Bohemia was one mass of the siliceous
fossil shells of these minute creatures, and that in a stratum
fourteen feet in thickness, one cubic inch contained the remains of
41,000,000,000 of individuals.
These kind of deposits are continually accumulating, and producing
important changes, in the bed of the Nile, at Dongola, and in the Elbe,
at Cuxhaven, and even choking up some of the harbours in the Baltic Sea.
Dr. Trail analyzed a bergmehl from the North of Sweden, and found it to
be composed of the minute shields of infusoria, about one thousandth
of an inch in size, consisting chiefly of siliceous earth and alumina.
A small quantity of this curious substance was found in County Down,
Ireland, by Dr. Drummond, twenty years ago, while sinking a pit near
Newcastle.
MM. Cloquet and Breschet ate experimentally as much as five ounces of a
silvery green laminar talc. Their hunger was completely satisfied, and
they felt no inconvenience from the use of a kind of food to which they
had not been accustomed. In parts of the East, use is still made of the
Bole earths of Lemnos, which are clay mixed with oxide of iron.
In Portugal and Spain, _bucaro_ clays are made into vessels, from which
many are fond of drinking on account of the smell of the clay; and the
women of the province of Alentejo acquire a habit of masticating the
bucaro earth, and feel it a great privation when unable to indulge in
this vitiated taste.
In the Bolivian markets, Dr. Weddell saw a grey-coloured clay which was
offered for sale. It is called _pahsa_, and the Indians of La Paz eat
it with the bitter potato of the country. It is steeped in water, made
into a kind of gruel, and seasoned with salt.
At Chiquisaca a kind of earth called _chaco_ is made into little pots,
and eaten like chocolate. Although their moderate use is not calculated
to injure the system, their contribution to the nourishment of the body
must be but small.
In the valleys of the Sikkim Himalayas, a kind of red earth is chewed
as a cure for the goître, but it is not stated to be regularly indulged
in as an article of food either there or in any other part of India.
Mr. Wallace relates that a little Indian boy died from the habit of
dirt-eating—a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half
breeds in the houses of the whites in the Amazon valley. All means had
been tried to cure the lad of the habit. He had been physicked and
whipped, and confined in doors; but when no other opportunity offered,
he would find a plentiful supply in the mud walls of the house. The
whole body, face, and limbs swelled, so that he could with difficulty
walk, and not having so much care taken of him, he ate his fill and
died.
Those who have had much to do with children, will have noticed amongst
some of them the germs of this propensity, which will occasionally
develop itself in chewing pieces of pipe, slate pencil, chalk, and
other substances of a like nature. Although not carried to so great an
extent as to become injurious, cases of this kind are far from being,
among school children, either exceptional or uncommon.
In the mission of San Borja, Humboldt found the child of an Indian
woman, which, according to the statement of its mother, would hardly
eat anything but earth. It was very thin and emaciated.
These instances are not, after all, so singular as those of habitual,
national dirt-eating which we find amongst the tribes of South America
and the negroes of Africa. Children are not always the most particular
in the choice of their articles of food, or we should not read of such
instances as occur in tropical America of these youngsters drawing
immense centipedes out of their holes and eating them; or, as related
by Captain Cochrane, of a child devouring several pieces of tallow
candle, which was succeeded by a large lump of yellow soap, all of
which he seemed to enjoy.
Chroniclers often make mention of the employment, during times of
war, of kinds of infusorial earth as food, under the general term of
mountain meal. This was the case in the Thirty Years War, at Camin in
Pomerania, Muskau in the Lausitz, and Kleiken in the Dessau territory;
and subsequently in 1719 and 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg. But in
times of war and scarcity, one is prepared to hear of men satisfying
their hunger by every legitimate means.
M. S. Julien sent to the Academy of Sciences at Paris some few years
since, specimens of a peculiar mineral substance from the province
of Kiang-si in China, on which, in times of famine, the inhabitants
have been said to be able to support themselves as a nutriment. It
has a disagreeable taste, and produces dryness in the mouth. It is
nevertheless used by the natives mixed with flour, and is even esteemed
by them.
It may appear somewhat singular to refer to these dirt-eating customs,
in connection with those relating to narcotics. The connection is,
however, more intimate than at the first glance might appear. Two kinds
of substances are mostly resorted to, either to gratify these depraved
tastes, or satisfy the cravings of hunger—lime and clay, or, as we
have designated them—_clay_ and _whitewash_. It is, or has been matter
of dispute, whether the stimulating properties of the betel and coca,
and the intoxicating snuffs of the Orinoco, are to be attributed to
the vegetable substances themselves, or to the lime used with them, or
both in conjunction; hence the introduction of lime is not considered
inappropriate. As for the clay, it is not only intimately associated
with the other, from the similarity of the use to which it is thus
strangely applied, but the connection of it in some of its forms with
the consumption of one or two of the narcotics, as the means whereby
they are indulged in, must serve as an apology, if such be needed.