228 The Andes and the Amazon. 



iiej, tlioiigli we were over two thousand miles from the At- 

 lantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the 

 Ambi-yacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. 

 Excepting Mr. Ilauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two 

 or three other wdiites, the inhabitants are Indians of the 

 Orejones and Yagna tribes. The exportations are ham- 

 mocks, sarsaparilla, palo de cruz, and urari. Palo de cruz 

 is the very hard, dark-colored wood of a small leguminous 

 tree bearing large pink flowers. Urari is the poison used 

 by all the Amazonian Indians ; it is made by the Ticunas 

 on the Putumayo, by boiling to a jelly the juices of certahi 

 roots and herbs, chiefly of the Btrychnos toxifera, thougli 

 it does not contain any trace of strychnine. Tipped with 

 urari, the needle-like arrow used in blow-guns will kill an 

 ox in twenty minutes and a monkey in ten. " "We have 

 reason to congratulate ourselves (wrote the facetious Sid- 

 ney Smith) that our method of terminating disputes is by 

 sword and pistol, and not by these medicated pins." But 

 the poison appears to be harmless to man and other salt- 

 eating animals, salt being an antidote."^ We were not 

 troubled with sand-flies after leaving the plaias of the 

 Napo, but the musquitoes at Pebas were supernumerary. 

 Perhaps, however, it was a special gathering on our ac- 

 count, for the natives have a notion that just before the 

 arrival of a foreigner the musquitoes come in great num- 

 bers. 



Many of the Indians are disfigured by dark blotches on 

 the skin, tiie effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in 



* Urari is mentioned by Raleigh, Humboldt was the first to take any 

 considerable quantity to Europe. The experiments ofVirchau andMiinster 

 make it pvobable that it does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons, but 

 that its particular effect is to take away the power of voluntary muscular 

 movement, while the involuntary functions of the heart and intestines still 

 continue. See Ann. de Chim. et de PIu/s., t. xxxix,, 1828, p. 24 ; and Schom- 

 berg's Reisen in Britisch Guiana., th. i., s. 441. The frightful poison, tientc 

 of India, is prepared from a Java species oi strychnos. 



