Gironda was cultivating sugar-cane, maize, and edible roots; and, at the time of my visit, he was just commencing his _michca_, or small sowing of maize. His people were driving holes in the ground with long poles, about a foot deep, into which they drop four to six grains, and cover over. The holes are four feet apart, for here the maize grows to an immense height. The agricultural tools were of a most primitive kind. The ground is first broken and cleared with a bit of old iron, fastened, at an acute angle, on a short handle. It is further broken up by an attempt at a spade, an oblong piece of iron, bent at one end round a long pole. The weeds and brushwood are cleared away by an instrument like the first, only turned a different way, both being secured to their handles by leathern thongs. They reap with the blade of an old knife, and where the clods require to be broken up very fine, as in coca plantations, it is done by hand. The only use that Gironda puts his small supply of sugar-cane to, as yet, is making spirits and a small quantity of treacle. The cane is expressed by a very primitive mill of three upright rollers of hard wood, worked by a single capstan-bar and a mule, the juice flowing into a gutter, and running thence, through a bamboo, into a large jar. The juice is then placed in two long canoes, hollow trunks of trees, where it is allowed to ferment. In about eight days the fermentation is over, and it is ready for distilling. This sugar-beer is called _huarapu_, and is rather good. The juice is then poured into a large jar, over an oven, and above the mouth of this jar he places the broken side of another smaller one, covering the joining round with mud. From the mouth of the second jar a bamboo is led through a large canoe to the mouth of a third jar. The fire is lighted in the oven, the canoe is filled with cold water to condense the vapour as it comes up through the bamboo, and the work of distilling begins; the clear colourless rum soon commencing to flow out of the bamboo into the receiving-jar. The sugar-cane is of the purplish-brown kind, which is said to ripen quickest.
Gironda also raises a few edible roots, such as _yucas_ (_Jatophra manihot_), _aracachas_[328] (_Conium maculatum_), _camotes_ or sweet potatoes, and _ocas_. He gave me the following information respecting the climate and seasons in the valley of Tambopata, which is worthy of attention, as this is the very centre of the _C. Calisaya_ region.