Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/168

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IN EASTERN BRAZIL.
49

Caput XVII.

How and from what cause we had to expect the enemy more at one time of the year than at another.

We had, however, to be especially on our guard more than usual against them, during two seasons, particularly when they proposed invading with violence their enemies' country. And these two periods are, the one in the month of November when a fruit becomes ripe, which is called in their language Abbati,[1] from which they make drink called Kaawy.[2] Therewith they have also the Mandioka root, of which

  1. This word is written Abaty, Abatij, Abaxi, Abashi, and Ubatim (Noticia do Brazil); it is applied to the Milho de Guiné, in old Portuguese Zaburro, Zea Mays, Mais, or Maize, a Haytian word which Yves d'Evreux writes "May", and explains blé de Turquie. St. Hilaire believes it to grow wild in Paraguay. The liquor made from it was called Abati-yg, millet water, beer, the African pombe, much like the Cornish stuff which Dr. Andrew Boorde described to be "white and thick as though pigges had wrastled in it." Southey (i, 191) is thus greatly in error when he explains Auati (de Bry for Abbati), as "probably the Acayaba of Piso and Marcgraff, which bears the Acajou, or Cashew nut."
  2. The similarity of this word and the Otaheitan Kaya is merely superficial. Kaawy, Cau-y, Caöi, or vulgarly Cauim (in chapter 18, Kawewi, and in chapter 28 Kawawy), is properly Acaju-yg, or Caju-yg, Cashew-nut water (fermented), generically applied to all fermented liquors, even of manioc-root. Hence the old French coined the substantive, Caouïnage drinking bout, and the verb Caouïner. Whilst the North American tribes had no fermented liquor, Bacchus, say the old authors, seems to have made his home in the Brazil. Marcgraff gives nine kinds of fermented liquors, the best being that called Nandi by Nieuhoff, the juice of the pine-apple (Nana-Vyg, whence our Ananas). They prized that of the Cashew, which once grew wild over the land, and whose nuts, often cast upon the Cornish shore, suggested a western world. They also made wine of the Jabuticaba Myrtle, and the Pacoba, or plantain (Pecou-yg). The chief materials, however, were the manioc-root, of two kinds, the poisonous and the harmless (Aypim, or Macachera). Of these were the Payuaru, the Cauï-Caraçu, and the Cauï-Macachera. From the Tapioca or sediment, they made Tapiocu-yg (Nieuhoff's Tipíaci) and from Beiju or Manioc cakes (Beiutingui Nieuhoff, p. 869). They ignored the grape, but