not very susceptible
to touch for it is hardened and toughened by the effects of sun, rain,
cold and dew which makes it as weather-beaten as that of any old salt's;
besides this they are accustomed from childhood to be stung by insects
and nettles, to be pricked and scratched by thorns and brambles, and to
be cut by the dry stiff blades of the long grasses of their native
place. Habit is second nature.

Their deficient sense of taste results from the practices mentioned
further on.

[Illustration: Another Sakai beauty.

_p._ 119.]

* * * * *

Sakai cookery does not require much study or experience.

The vegetable food they have at their disposition consists of: sweet
potatoes, yams, maize, sikoi, different bulbs and tubers that they find
in the forest like we do truffles, many edible leaves and all sorts of
fruit, mushrooms, _nanka_, _guaccicous_, _gua pra_,[9] etc. Rice is an
imported luxury which they use when they can get it.

Here are the necessaries for a variety of dishes, but the Sakais know no
variety in the culinary art and with the exception of the fruit, the
yams and potatoes that are cooked under the hot ashes, the whole lot is
put, with a little water, into cooking-pots made out of large bamboo
canes, and boiled up together into a kind of paste with pieces of
serpents, rats, toads, lizards, beetles and other similar delicacies to
give it flavour.

The monkey, deer, wild-boar, wild-sheep and any other big game caught in
traps they just burn at the fire without taking the trouble to skin the
animal, and then they eat it nearly raw.

They season the meat with salt, when they have any, which is not often,
and with a capsicum that sets your mouth on fire. The use of this
capsicum, and the continual chewing of tobacco, and betel has ruined the
palate of the Sakais, and left them with little power of relishing.

Fish is rarely seen at the board (I use the word in a figurative sense
as the thing it signifies does not exist for them) of the mountain
tribes for the double motive that they have no fishing tackle and their
fear of the water makes them avoid it as much as possible. Nevertheless
when there is a dearth of other food they will throw in some beaten
_ple-pra_ and the fish, of a fair size, that rise to the surface to bite
it are deftly hit by a knife, the Sakai seldom failing in his mark.

To the simplicity of their cooking corresponds the still greater
simplicity