432 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



with him for the whole of his materia medica, if my 

 stock-in-trade would have sufficed. 



Rochefort (Histoire Naturelle et l\Iorale des Isles 

 Antilles, Rotterdam, 1665), says: "Their Boyes or 

 medicine-men practise both medicine and devilry. 

 They are resorted to: i, to cause punishment to 

 fall on some one who has wronged or injured the 

 applicant ; 2, to cure some disease ; 3, to foretell 

 the advent of a war ; 4, to drive out the Maboya or 

 Evil Spirit" (p. 472). 



Their functions are very much the same at the 

 present day among the native tribes of the main- 

 land as they were two or three hundred years ago 

 in the isles of the Caribbean Sea. I propose, in 

 what follows, to review briefly the use made by the 

 payes of their materia medica in the treatment of 

 disease. 



The apparatus and materia medica of the medi- 

 cine-men of the region lying adjacent to the Upper 

 Rio Negro and Orinoco, and extending thence 

 westward to the Andes, are chiefly the following :- 



The Maraca or Rattle. 



Tobacco, juice and smoke. 



Niopo (or Parica), powdered seeds in snuff. 



Caapi (or Aya-huasca), stems in infusion, 

 i. The Maraca or Rattle.- -This is the hard 

 globose or oval pericarp of the Crescentia Cujete, or 

 sometimes of a gourd, tastefully engraved and per- 

 forated in geometrical or fantastic designs, and the 

 lines usually coloured. To make it rattle, a few 

 small bright-red or red-and-black beans are put 

 into it ; those most used on the Uaupes are seeds 

 of Batesia erythrosperma (Spruce) and of Ormosia 

 coccinca (Jack). I have seen the maraca used in 



