NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 421 



Orinoco have all told me the same tale, merely with 

 slight personal variations. A Brazilian friend said 

 that when he once took a full dose of caapi he saw 

 all the marvels he had read of in the Arabian 

 Nights pass rapidly before his eyes as in a panorama; 

 but the final sensations and sights were horrible, as 

 they always are. 



At the feast of Urubii-coara I learnt that caapi 

 was cultivated in some quantity at a roca a few 

 hours' journey down the river, and I went there 

 one day to get specimens of the plant, and (if pos- 

 sible) to purchase a sufficient quantity of the stems 

 to be sent to England for analysis ; in both which 

 objects I was successful. There were about a dozen 

 well-grown plants of caapi, twining up to the tree- 

 tops along the margin of the roca, and several 

 smaller ones. It was fortunately in flower and 

 young fruit, and I saw, not without surprise, that 

 it belonged to the order Malpighiacece and the 

 genus Banisteria, of which I made it out to be an 

 undescribed species, and therefore called it Banisteria 

 Caapi. My surprise arose from the fact that there 

 was no narcotic Malpighiad on record, nor indeed 

 any species of that order with strong medicinal 

 properties of any kind. Byrsonima a Malpighi- 

 aceous genus that abounds in the Amazon valley- 

 includes many species, all handsome little trees, 

 with racemes of yellow or rose-coloured flowers, 

 followed by small edible but rather insipid drupes. 

 Their bark abounds in tannin, and is the usual 

 material for tanning leather at Para, as also, by 

 the Indians, for dyeing coarse cotton garments a 

 red -brown colour. Another genus- -Bunchosia- 

 grows chiefly on the slopes of the Andes, at from 



