442 PREPARATION OF THE POISOlf. 



are ignorant, are found loaded with flowers and fruits In 

 travelling rapidly, even within the tropics, where the ilower- 

 ing of the ligneous plants is of such long duration, scarcely 

 one-eighth of the trees can be seen furnishing the essential 

 parts of fructification. The chances of being able to deter- 

 mine, I do not say the family, but the genus and species, is 

 consequently as one to eight ; and it may be conceived that 

 this unfavourable chance is felt most powerfully when it 

 deprives us of the intimate knowledge of objects which 

 afford a higher interest than that of descriptive botany. 



At the instant when the glutinous juice of the kiraca- 

 guero-tree is poured into the venomous liquor well concen- 

 tarted, and kept in a state of ebullition, it blackens, and 

 coagulates into a mass of the consistence of tar, or of a 

 thick syrup. This mass is the curare of commerce. When 

 we h^ar the Indians say that the kiracaguero is as necessary 

 as the bejuco de mavacure in the manufacture of the poison, 

 we may be led into error by the supposition that the former 

 also contains some deleterious principle, while it only servea 

 (as the algarrobo, or any other gummy substance would do) 

 to give more body to the concentrated juice of the curare. 

 The change of colour which the mixture undergoes is owing 

 to the decomposition of a hydruret of carbon ; the hydrogen 

 is burned, and the carbon is set free. The curare is sold in 

 little calabashes ; but its preparation being in the hands of 

 a few families, and the quantity of poison attached to each 

 dart being extremely small, the best curare, that of Esme- 

 ralda and Mandavaca, is sold at a very high price. This 

 substance, when dried, resembles opium; but it strongly 

 absorbs moisture when exposed to the air. Its taste is 

 an agreeable bitter, and M. Bonpland and myself have often 

 swallowed small portions of it. There is no danger in so 

 doing, if it be certain that neither lips nor gums bleed. In 

 experiments made by Mangili on the venom of the viper, 

 one of his assistants swallowed all the poison that could 

 be extracted from four large vipers of Italy, without being 

 affected by it. The Indians consider the curare, taken 

 internally, as an excellent stomachic. The same poison 

 prepared by the Piraoas and Salives, though it has some 

 celebrity, is not so much esteemed as that of Esmeralda. 

 The process of this preparation appears to be everywhere 



