Mandioca or cassava is likewise cultivated in great quantity.

Every part of this plant is useful: the leaves and stalks are eaten by the horses, and the roots are ground into a pulp, which, when pressed dry and baked, forms the farinha, the principal article of sustenance in the Brazils.

It is a curious, though well-known fact, that the juice of this most nutritious plant is highly poisonous.

A few years ago a cow died at this Fazenda, in consequence of having drunk some of it.

Senhor Figuireda told me that he had planted, the year before, one bag of feijao or beans, and three of rice; the former of which produced eighty, and the latter three hundred and twenty fold.