430 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



a strong inspiration. M. Maugin thus describes 

 its effects on an Indian whom he saw take it. 

 "His eyes started from his head, his mouth con- 

 tracted, his limbs trembled. It was fearful to see 

 him. He was obliged to sit down or he would 

 have fallen. He was drunk, but only for about 

 five minutes ; he was then gayer." 



" Medicine-Men " and their Customs 



Among the native tribes of the Uaupes and of 

 the upper tributaries of the Orinoco, niopo or 

 parica is the chief curative agent. When the paye 

 is called in to treat a patient, he first snuffs up his 

 nose such a quantity of parica as suffices to throw 

 him into a sort of ecstasy, wherein he professes to 

 divine the nature of the evil wish which has caused 

 the sickness, and to gather force to counteract it. 

 He next lights a very thick cigar of tobacco, in- 

 hales a quantity of smoke, and puffs it out over the 

 sick man, over the hammock in which he is laid, 

 and over everything he habitually uses, but espe- 

 cially over the food he is to eat. This done, the 

 paye professes to suck out the ill, by applying his 

 mouth to the seat of pain, or as near to it as 

 practicable ; and he spits out the morbid matter- 

 most likely tobacco or coca juice and sometimes 

 produces from his mouth thorns and other sub- 

 stances, previously hidden there, but which he 

 pretends to have extracted from the sick man's 

 body. If the sickness ends fatally, he denounces 

 the enemy whose evil wish has caused it, and not 

 infrequently it is some rival paye, of the same or 

 another nation. Hence I was told that the payes 



