University of Virginia Library

II.
Journey around a Tapioca Pudding.

DR. Bushwhacker folded his napkin, drew it
through the silver ring, laid it on the table,
folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, by which we
knew there was something at work in his knowledge-box.
“My dear Madam,” said he, with a Metamora shake of
the head, “there are a great many things to be said
about that pudding.”

Now, such a remark at a season of the year when eggs
are five for a shilling, and not always fresh at that, is
enough to discomfort any body. The Doctor perceived
it at once, and instantly added, “In a geographical point
of view, there are many things to be said about that
pudding. My dear madam,” he continued, “take tapioca
itself; what is it, and where does it come from?”

Our eldest boy, just emerging from chickenhood, answered,
“85 Chambers street, two doors below the Irving
House.”

“True, my dear young friend,” responded the Doctor,
with a friendly pat on the head; “true, but that is not
what I mean. Where,” he repeated, with a questioning
look through his spectacles, and a Bushwhackian nod,
“does tapioca come from?”

“Rio de Janeiro and Para!”

“Yes, sir; from Rio de Janeiro in the southern, and
Para in the northern part of the Brazils, do we get our
tapioca; from the roots of a plant called the Mandioca,
botanically, the Jatropha Manihot, or, as they say, the
Cassava. The roots are long and round, like a sweet
potato; generally a foot or more in length. Every joint
of the plant will produce its roots like the cuttings of a
grape-vine. The tubers are dug up from the ground,
peeled, scraped, or grated, then put in long sacks of flexible
rattan; sacks, six feet long or more, and at the bottom
of the sack they suspend a large stone, by which the
flexible sides are contracted, and then out pours the cassava-juice
in a pan placed below to receive it. This juice
is poisonous, sir, highly poisonous, and very volatile.
Then, my dear madam, it is macerated in water, and the
residum, after the volatile part, the poison, is evaporated,
is the innocuous farina, which looks like small crumbs of
bread, and which we call tapioca. The best kind of tapioca
comes from Rio, which is, I believe, about five thousand
five hundred miles from New York; so we must put
down that as a little more than one fifth of our voyage
around the pudding.”

This made our eldest open his eyes.

“Eggs and milk,” continued Dr. Bushwhacker, “are
home productions; but sugar, refined sugar, is made
partly of the moist and sweet yellow sugar of Louisiana,
partly of the hard and dry sugar of the West Indies; I

will not go into the process of refining sugar now, but I
may observe here, that the sugar we get from Louisiana,
if refined and made into a loaf, would be quite soft, with
large loose crystals, while the Havana sugar, subjected to
the same treatment, would make a white cone almost as
compact and hard as granite. But we have made a trip
to the Antilles for our sugar, and so you may add fifteen
hundred miles more for the saccharine.”

“That is equal to nearly one-third of the circumference
of the pudding we live upon, Doctor.”

“Vanilla,” continued the Doctor, “with which this
pudding is so delightfully flavored, is the bean of a vine
that grows wild in the multitudinous forests of Venezuela,
New Granada, Guiana, and, in fact, throughout South
America. The long pod, which looks like the scabbard
of a sword, suggested the name to the Spaniards; vagna,
meaning scabbard, from which comes the diminutive,
vanilla, or little scabbard—appropriate enough, as every
one will allow. These beans, which are worth here from
six to twenty dollars a pound, could be as easily cultivated
as hops in that climate; but the indolence of the people
is so great, that not one Venezuelian has been found
with sufficient enterprise to set out one acre of vanilla,
which would yield him a small fortune every year. No,
sir. The poor peons, or peasants, raise their garabanzas
for daily use, but beyond that they never look. They
plant their crops in the footsteps of their ancestors, and,
if it had not been for their ancestors, they would probably

have browsed on the wild grass of the llanos or plains.
Ah! there are a great many such bobs hanging at the tail
of some ancestral kite, even in this great city, my dear,
learned friend.”

“True, Doctor, you are right there.”

“Well, sir, the vanilla is gathered from the wild vines
in the woods. Off goes the hidalgo, proud of his noble
ancestry, and toils home under a back-load of the refuse
beans from the trees, after the red monkey has had his
pick of the best. A few reals pay him for the day's
work, and then, hey for the cock-pit! There, Signor
Olfogie meets the Marquis de Shinplaster, or the Padre
Corcorochi, and of course gets whistled out of his earnings
with the first click of the gaffs. Then back he goes
to his miserable hammock, and so ends his year's labor.
That, sir, is the history of the flavoring, and you will
have to allow a stretch across the Caribbean, say twenty-five
hundred miles, for the vanilla.”

“We are getting pretty well around, Doctor.”

“Then we have sauce, here, wine-sauce; Teneriffe, I
should say, by the flavor.

We must take four thousand miles at least for the wine,
my learned friend, and say nothing of the rest of the
sauce.”

“Except the nutmeg, Doctor.”

“Thank you, my dear young friend, thank you. The
nutmeg! To the Spice Islands, in the Indian Ocean we
are indebted for our nutmegs. Our old original Knickerbockers,
the web-footed Dutchmen, have the monopoly
of this trade. Every nutmeg has paid toll at the Hague
before it yields its aroma to our graters. The Spice
Islands! The almost fabulous Moluccas, where neither
corn nor rice will grow; where the only quadrupeds they
have are the odorous goats that breathe the fragrant air,
and the musky crocodiles that bathe in the high-seasoned
waters. The Moluccas,

There, sir! Milton, sir. From Ternate and Tidore, and
the rest of that marvellous cluster of islands, we get our
nutmegs, our mace, and our cloves. Add twelve thousand
miles at least to the circumference of the pudding
for the nutmeg.”

“This is getting to be a pretty large pudding, Doctor.”

“Yes, sir. We have traveled already twenty-five
thousand five hundred miles around it, and now let us
re-circumnavigate and come back by the way of Mexico,
so that we can get a silver spoon, and penetrate into
the interior.”