THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 139 



plants which produce it, the mode of extraction 

 which the Indians fallow, and their employment in 

 the hands of those who make cruel use of it. It is 

 a purely vegetable -substance, produced by a liane be- 

 longing to the genus Strychnos, and abounding east 

 of the mission of Esmaralda, on the left bank of the 

 Orinoco, but growing also on the eastern slopes of the 

 Cordilleras and in the forests upon the barlks of the 

 great equatorial rivers of South America. It is called 

 the mavacure liana (Strychnos toxiferab) 



" When the bark of the mavacure is opened a 

 yellowish liquid," says Humboldt, " continues to ooze 

 out for several hours drop by drop. This filtered 

 juice is the poisonous liquid ; but it has not acquired 

 all its strength until it is concentrated by evaporation 

 in a large clay pot placed over a fire. The Indian 

 who filled the office of Poison Master, asked me from 

 time to time to taste this poison liquid. It is by the 

 bitterness of the taste that one judges whether the 

 poison has been sufficiently concentrated. There is 

 no danger in tasting curare, as it becomes fatal only 

 by coming in direct contact with the blood." 



Other travellers, like Scomburgk and Poeppig, 

 have given us interesting descriptions of this prepara- 

 tion and of the deadly properties of the poison, which 

 are so overwhelming that the Indians still use it in 

 preference to the fire-arms of Europeans, the savage 

 arms himself with a long and straight tube ; the points 

 of his arrows, made of hard wood and a foot long, are 

 dipped in the curare, while the other end is wrapped 

 in a quantity of cotton, which makes it exactly fit the 



