3GG bTECIES OF BEABB. 



Meta. Here, as throughout America, the Indianb jat little 

 meat, and consume scarcely any salt. The chivi of Javita is 

 a mixture of muriate of potash and of soda, of caustic lime, 

 and of several other earthy salts. The Indians dissolve a 

 few particles in water, fill with this solution a leaf of 

 heliconia folded in a conical form, and let drop a little, as 

 from the extremity of a filter, on their food. 



On the 5th of May we set off, to follow on foot our canoe, 

 which had at length arrived, by the portage, at the Cano 

 Pimichin. "We had to ford a great number of streams ; and 

 these passages require some caution on account of the vipers 

 with which the marshes abound. The Indians pointed out 

 to us on the moist clay the traces of the little black bears so 

 common on the banks of the Temi. They differ at least in 

 size from the Ursus americanus. The missionaries call them 

 osso carnicero, to distinguish them from the osso palmero or 

 tamanoir (Myrmecophaga jubata), and from the osso kor- 

 tnigero, or anteater (tamandua). The flesh of these animals 

 is good to eat ; the first two defend themselves by rising on 

 their hind feet. The tamanoir of Buffon is called uaraca by 

 the Indians ; it is irascible and courageous, which is extra- 

 ordinary in an animal without teeth. We found, as we ad- 

 vanced, some vistas in the forest, which appeared to us the 

 richer, as it became more accessible. "We here gathered 

 some new species of coffee (the American tribe, with flowers 

 in panicles, forms probably a particular genus) ; the Gralega 

 piscatorum, of which the Indians make use, as they do of 

 jacquinia, and of a composite plant of the Bio Temi, as a kind 

 of barbasco, to intoxicate fish ; and finally, the liana, known 

 in those countries by the name of vejuco de mavacure, whicX 

 yields the famous curare poison. It is neither a phyllanthus, 

 nor a coriaria, as M. "Willdenouw conjectured, but, as M. 

 Kunth's researches show, very probably a strychnos. "We 

 shall have occasion, farther on, to speak of this venomous 

 substance, which is an important object of trade among the 



The trees of the forest of Pimichin have the gigantic 

 height of from eighty to a hundred and twenty feet. In 

 these burning climates the laurineae and amyris* furnish 



* The great white and red cedars of these countries are not the Cedrela 

 odo.rata, but tho Amyris altissima, which is an icica of Aublet. 





