Food—­Though South America is rich in food and food possibilities, she has not solved the problem of living economically on her frontiers.  The prices asked for food in the rubber districts we passed through were amazing.  Five milreis (one dollar and fifty cents) was cheap for a chicken, and eggs at five hundred reis (fifteen cents) apiece were a rarity.  Sugar was bought at the rate of one to two milreis a kilo—­in a country where sugar-cane grows luxuriantly.  The main dependence is the mandioc, or farina, as it is called.  It is the bread of the country and is served at every meal.  The native puts it on his meat and in his soup and mixes it with his rice and beans.  When he has nothing else he eats the farina, as it is called, by the handful.  It is seldom cooked.  The small mandioc tubers when boiled are very good and are used instead of potatoes.  Native beans are nutritious and form one of the chief foods.

In the field the native cook wastes much time.  Generally provided with an inadequate cooking equipment, hours are spent cooking beans after the day’s work, and then, of course, they are often only partially cooked.  A kettle or aluminum Dutch oven should be taken along, large enough to cook enough beans for both breakfast and dinner.  The beans should be cooked all night, a fire kept burning for the purpose.  It would only be necessary then to warm the beans for breakfast and dinner, the two South American meals.

For meat the rubber hunter and explorer depends upon his rifle and fish-hook.  The rivers are full of fish which can readily be caught, and, in Brazil, the tapir, capybara, paca, agouti, two or three varieties of deer, and two varieties of wild pig can occasionally be shot; and most of the monkeys are used for food.  Turtles and turtle eggs can be had in season and a great variety of birds, some of them delicious in flavor and heavy in meat.  In the hot, moist climate fresh meat will not keep and even salted meat has been known to spoil.  For use on the Roosevelt expedition I arranged a ration for five men for one day packed in a tin box; the party which went down the Duvida made each ration do for six men for a day and a half, and in addition gave over half the bread or hardtack to the camaradas.  By placing the day’s allowance of bread in this same box, it was lightened sufficiently to float if dropped into water.  There were seven variations in the arrangement of food in these boxes and they were numbered from 1 to 7, so that a different box could be used every day of the week.  In addition to the food, each box contained a cake of soap, a piece of cheese-cloth, two boxes of matches, and a box of table salt.  These tin boxes were lacquered to protect from rust and enclosed in wooden cases for transportation.  A number in large type was printed on each.  No. 1 was cased separately; Nos. 2 and 3, 4 and 5, 6 and 7 were cased together.  For canoe travel the idea was to take these wooden cases off.  I did not have an opportunity personally to experience the management of these food cases.  We had sent them all ahead by pack-train for the explorers of the Duvida River.  The exploration of the Papagaio was decided upon during the march over the plateau of Matto Grosso and was accomplished with dependence upon native food only.