and the Plant from which it is extracted. 411 



My wish was thus reahzed ; and that plant which Baron dc 

 Humboldt Avas prevented from seeing, and which was one of 

 the chief objects of Mr. Waterton's 'Wanderings,' but without 

 success, I now saw before me. Baron de Humboldt^ with his 

 usual sagacity, observes, " The danger of the Curare, as of 

 most other Strychnea {for we continue to believe that the 

 Mavacure belongs to a neighbouring family), results only from 

 the action of the poison on tlie vascular system *." 



Though I did not find the plant in flower, it was bearing 

 fruit, and their inspection assured me that, as Yon Humboldt 

 suspected, the plant belongs to the genus Strychnos-^. It 

 forms No. 155 of my Guiana plants, and is thus characterized 

 by Mr. Benthara : — '' Strychnos toxifera, Schomb., Hook. Ic. 

 PI. t. 364 and 365 ; ram is scandentibus cirrhisque pilis longis 

 patentibus rufis dense obtectis, foliis sessilibus ovali-oblongis 

 acuminatis membranaceis trinerviis utrinque pilis longis rufis 



hirsutis, floribus fructibus maximis globosis. — -Folia 



3 — 4-pollicaria." 



The Strychnos toxifera, as I have called it, the Urari of the 

 Macusi and AVapisiana Indians, is a native of South America, 

 and a sporadic plant ; and, as far as knov.n to us, has been 

 hitherto found only in the granitic mountains of Canuku or 

 Conocon, in latitude 3° 10' N., a group of mountains which 

 border the extensive savannahs of the rivers llupununi, Mahu 

 and Takutu. It is a ligneous twiner : at its root, of the thick- 

 ness of a man's arm, and covered Avith a rough ash-coloured 

 bark, marked Avith fissures ; winding itself to the neighbour- 



1831, vol. iii. p. 1155.) The compound tenns Uraricapara and Uraricuera 

 (Parinia), two rivers, the former the tributary of the latter, and which we find 

 imder these names in the oldest maps we possess of these regions, is another 

 argument in favour of Urari. The arrow poison is generally known in En- 

 gland under the name of Wouraly, a name hy which Mr. Waterton, in his 

 ' Wanderings,' has described it ; but interesting as his description may prove 

 to the general reader, and however delightful the i)icture he draws of his 

 various exploits, it is a work which never will be consulted as authority in 

 scientific questions. 



* Personal Narrative, vol. v. part ii. p. 527. 



t The chief ingredient of the arrow poison of the Indians of the Yuppura 

 is, according to Von Martius, the bark of a slender tree, which, in the Tupi 

 tongue, is called Urari-hva, the Ronhamon gitjanensis of Aublet. A plant 

 which forms one of the ingredients in the preparation of the Macusi poison, 

 and v.hich, in many respects, agrees with Aublet's figure, has been named 

 by Mr. Bentham, in the enumeration of my Guiana phmts, Stryckiios cogens. 

 However, the Urari plant of the Macusis, although belonging to the same 

 genus, differs in numei-ous specific points. (Compare Von ^ilattius, Reise in 

 Brasilien, vol. iii. p. 1237.) I have little doubt, that the plant of which the 

 Indians by Esmeralda prepare their j^oison, is Aublet's Ronhamon, and in 

 this I am confirmed by a conversation with Dr. Kunth in Berlin, who, as is 

 Avell known, determined Von Humboldt's plants. 



