THE WOURALI POISON 533 



to the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its 

 first knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe, and the slender 

 arrows which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim are 

 made of the leaf-stalks of a species of palm-tree {Maximi- 

 liana regia), hard and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. 

 You would hardly suppose these fragile missiles capable of in- 

 flicting the slightest wound at any distance, and yet they strike 

 more surely and effectually than the rifleman's bullet, for their 

 point is dipped in the deadly juice of the Strychnos Urari, whose 

 venomous powers are not inferior to those of the dreaded bush- 

 master or the fatal cobra. 



It is chiefly on the Camuku mountains in Guiana that this for- 

 midable creeping-plant is found, whose sombre-coloured, brown- 

 haired leaves and rind seem by their sinister appearance to 

 betray its dreadful qualities. The savage tribes of the South 

 American woods know how to poison their arrows with the 

 juices of various plants, but none equals this in virulence and 

 certainty of execution, and yearly the Indians of the Orinoco, the 

 Eio Negro, and even of the Amazons, wander to the Camuku 

 mountains to purchase by barter the renowned Urari or Wourali 

 poison of the Macusis. Nature has vouchsafed to these sons of 

 the wilderness an inestimable gift in the venomous juice of the 

 strychnos, for by no other means would they be able to kill the 

 birds of the forest and the monkeys on whose flesh they chiefly 

 subsist. How they made the discovery of its powers is unknown ; 

 at all events the combination of so many means for the attain- 

 ment of the end in view — the preparation of the poison, the 

 blow-pipe, the arrows — denotes a high degree of ingenuity, and 

 shows at once the infinite superiority of the savage over the 

 monkey. Fatal to every animal it touches, the wourali poison 

 sometimes proves destructive to the archer, " One day," says 

 Waterton, " while we were eating a red monkey, erroneously called 

 the baboon in Demarara, an Arawack Indian told an affecting 

 story of what happened to a comrade of his. He was present 

 at his death, and as it did not interest this Indian in any point 

 to tell a falsehood, it is very probable that his account was a true 

 one. If so, it appears that there is no certain antidote, or at 

 least no antidote that could be resorted to in a case of urgent 

 need, for the Indian gave up all thoughts of life as soon as he 

 was wounded. The Arawack Indian said it was but four years 



