436 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



essential to the making of payes. Bancroft says : 

 " The order of Peiis is inherited by the eldest sons. 

 A young Peii is initiated with superstitious cere- 

 monies lasting several weeks. Among other things, 

 he is dosed with tobacco till it no longer operates 

 as an emetic" (loc. cit.\ 



Tobacco -smoke is blown on the sick person 

 by the paye in almost all methods of cure, whether 

 the maraca, niopo, or caapi be the primary agent. 

 In lieu of the two latter it would seem that in some 

 nations the enchanters narcotised themselves by 

 chewing tobacco and swallowing the juice. The 

 large cigar used on the Uaupes is smoked in the 

 ordinary way, and the smoke blown from the 

 mouth ; but in the country bordering the Pacific 

 coast of Equatorial America the cigar two or 

 three feet long, but slenderer than that of the 

 Uaupes was held in the mouth at the lighted end, 

 and the smoke blown from the opposite end upon 

 the sick person, or, at a feast, in the faces of the 

 guests, whereof Wafer has an amusing account and 

 a rude picture (p. 327, loc. cit.']. He calls the payes 

 pawawers, evidently the same name, with a merely 

 dialectic difference. It is curious that at the present 

 clay the Indians and negroes along that coast fre- 

 quently hold the lighted end of a cigar in their 

 mouths, as any one who has sojourned at Panama or 

 Guayaquil may have observed. 



The uses of niopo (or parica) and of caapi (or 

 aya-huasca) I have already indicated above. The 

 former is the chief " medicine " of the payes on the 

 affluents of the Amazon, both northern and southern, 

 and on the Orinoco ; but the latter in the roots of 

 the Equatorial Andes. I have not learnt that they 



