444 ETFECTS OF THE POISON. 



mavacwe is a mortal poison only when it is concentrated by 

 fire ; and ebullition deprives the juice of the root of Jatroplia 

 inanihot (the manioc) of all its baneful qualities. In nib- 

 bing a long time between my fingers the liana which yields 

 the potent poison of La Peca, when the weather was exces- 

 sively hot, my hands were benumbed; and a person who 

 was employed with me felt the same effects from this rapid 

 absorption by the uninjured integuments. 



I shall not here enter into any detail on the physiological 

 properties of those poisons of the New World which kill 

 with the same promptitude as the strychneae of Asia,* but 

 without producing vomiting when they are received into the 

 stomach, and without denoting the approach of death by 

 the violent excitement of the spinal marrow. Scarcely a 

 fowl is eaten on the banks of the Orinoco which lias not 

 been killed with a poisoned arrow; and the missionaries 

 allege that the flesh of animals is never so good as when 

 this method is employed. Father Zea, who accompanied 

 us, though ill of a tertian fever, every morning had the live 

 fowls allotted for our food brought to his hammock together 

 with an arrow, and he killed them himself; for he would 

 not confide this operation, to which he attached great 

 importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan 

 (pava de monte) for instance, or a curassao (alector), when 

 wounded in the thigh, die in two or three minutes; but 

 it is often ten or twelve minutes before life is extinct in a 

 pig or a peccary. M. Bonpland found that the same poison, 

 bought in different villages, varied much. We had pro- 

 cured at the river Amazon some real Ticuna poison which 

 was less potent than any of the varieties of the curare of the 

 Orinoco. Travellers, on arriving in the missions, frequently 

 testify their apprehension on learning that the fowls, mon- 

 keys, guanas, and even the fish which they eat, have been 

 killed with poisoned arrows. But these fears are ground- 

 less. Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments 

 on transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter 

 Btrychnos of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no 

 fatal action on other animals. A dog received a consider- 

 able quantity of poisoned blood into his veins without any 

 trace of irritation being perceived in the spinal marrow. 



* The nux vrmica, th.3 upas tieute, and the bean of St. Ignatius, 

 OStrychnog Ignatia.) 



