438 ^HE CTJRASE POISOff. 



interest shall call new settlers thither. Habitual evils are 

 those which are least felt; and men born in America do 

 not suffer the same intensity of pain as Europeans recently 

 arrived. Perhaps, also, the destruction of forests round 

 the inhabited places, although slow, will somewhat tend to 

 diminish the torment of the tipulary insects. San Fer- 

 nando de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos, and Esmeralda, 

 appear (from their situation at the mouth of the Guaviare, 

 the portage between Tuamini and the Bio Negro, the con- 

 fluence of the Cassiquiare, and the point of bifurcation of 

 the Upper Orinoco) to promise a considerable increase of 

 population and prosperity. The same improvement will 

 taKe place in the fertile but uncultivated countries through 

 which flow the Gruallaga, the Amazon, and the Orinoco; 

 as well as at the isthmus of Panama, the lake of Nicaragua, 

 and the Bio Huasacualco, which furnish a communication 

 between the two oceans. The imperfection of political 

 institutions may for ages have converted into deserts places 

 where the commerce of the world should be found cx> i- 

 centred; but the time approaches when these obstacles \till 

 exist no longer. A vicious administration cannot always 

 struggle against the united interest of men ; and civilization 

 will be carried insensibly into those countries, the great 

 destinies of which nature itself proclaims, by the physical 

 configuration of the soil, the immense windings of the rivers, 

 and the proximity of two seas, that bathe the shores of 

 Europe and of India. 



Esmeralda is the most celebrated spot on the Orinoco for 

 the preparation of that active poison, which is employed in 

 war, in the chase, and, singularly enough, as a remedy for 

 gastric derangements. The poison of the ticunas of the 

 Amazon, the wpas-tieute of Java, and the cwrare of GKiiana, 

 are the most deleterious substances that are known. Ra- 

 leigh, about the end of the sixteenth century, had heard of 

 urari* as being a vegetable substance with which arrows 

 were envenomed ; yet no fixed notions of this poison had 

 reached Europe. The missionaries Grumilla and Grili had 

 not been able to penetrate into the country where the 

 cwrare is manufactured. Gumilla asserts that "this pre- 



* In Tamanac marana in Maypure, macvri. 





