ITS COMPONENT HERBS. 441 



high, with an opening four inches wide. This funnel was 

 of all the instruments of the Indian laboratory that of 

 which the poison-master seemed to be most proud. He 

 asked us repeatedly if, por alia (put yonder, meaning in 

 Europe), we had ever seen anything to be compared to this 

 funnel (em budo) . It was a leaf of the plantain-tree rolled up 

 in the form of a cone, and placed within another stronger 

 cone made of the leaves of the palm-tree. The whole of 

 this apparatus was supported by slight frame- work made of 

 the petioles and ribs of palm-leaves. A cold infusion is 

 first prepared by pouring water on the fibrous matter which 

 is the ground bark of the mavacure. A yellowish water 

 filters during several hours, drop by drop, through the leafy 

 funnel. This filtered water is the poisonous liquor, but it 

 acquires strength only when concentrated by evaporation, 

 )ike molasses, in a large earthen pot. The Indian from 

 time to time invited us to taste the h'quid ; its taste, more 

 or less bitter, decides when the concentration by fire has 

 been carried sufficiently far. There is no danger in tasting 

 it, the curare being deleterious only when it comes into 

 immediate contact with the blood. The vapours, therefore, 

 which are disengaged from the pans are not hurtful, notwith- 

 standing all that has been asserted on this point by the mis- 

 sionaries of the Orinoco. Eontana, in his experiments on 

 the poison of the ticuna of the Amazon, long since proved 

 that the vapours arising from this poison, when thrown 

 on burning charcoal, may be inhaled without danger; 

 and that the statement of La Condamine, that Indian 

 women, when condemned to death, have been killed by the 

 vapours of the poison of the ticuna, is incorrect. 



The most concentrated juice of the mavacure is not thick 

 enough to stick to the darts ; and therefore, to give a bodv 

 to the poison, another vegetable juice, extremely gluti- 

 nous, drawn from a tree with large leaves, called kiracaguero, 

 is poured into the concentrated infusion. As this tree grows 

 at a great distance from Esmeralda, and was at that period 

 as destitute of flowers and fruits as the bejuco de mavacure, 

 we could not determine it botanically. I have several times 

 mentioned that kind of fatality which withholds the most 

 interesting plants from the examination of travellers, while 

 thousands oi others, of the chemical properties of which we 



