4 i6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP, xxv 



enouo-h water is added to render it drinkable. Thus 



o 



prepared, its colour is brownish-green, and its taste 

 bitter and disagreeable. 



The Use and Effects of Caapi 



In November 1852 I was present, by special 

 invitation, at a Dabocuri or Feast of Gifts, held in 

 a malloca or village- house called Urubu-coara 

 (Turkey-buzzard's nest), above the first falls of the 

 Uaupes ; the village of Panure, where I was then 

 residing, being at the base of the same falls, and 

 about four miles away from Urubu-coara, following 

 the course of the river, which during that space is a 

 continuous succession of rapids and cataracts among 

 rocky islands. We reached the malloca at nightfall, 

 just as the botutos or sacred trumpets began to 

 boom lugubriously within the margin of the forest 

 skirting the wide space kept open and clear of weeds 

 around the malloca. 1 At that sound every female 

 outside makes a rush into the house, before the 

 botutos emerge on the open ; for to merely see one 

 of them would be to her a sentence of death. We 

 found about 300 people assembled, and the dances 

 at once commenced. I need not detail the whole 

 proceedings, for similar feasts have already been 

 described by Mr. Wallace (Travels on the Amazon 

 and Rio Negro, pp. 280 and 348). Indeed, there 



1 Some of the trumpets used at this very feast are now in the Museum of 

 Vegetable Products at Kew. To get them out of the river Uaupes, when I 

 left for Venezuela in March 1853, I wrapped them in mats and put them on 

 board myself at dead of night, stowing them under the cabin floor, out of sight of 

 my Indian mariners, who would not one of them have embarked with me had 

 they known such articles were in the boat. The old Portuguese missionaries 

 called these trumpets juruparis or devils merely a bit of jealousy on their 

 part ; the botuto being the only fetish not worshipped, but held in high 

 respect throughout the whole Negro-Orinoco region. (See figures opposite.) 



