norH] WEAPONS: HUNTING AND FIGHTING 149 
interest, is the curare or urari. Other names tor it are wirari in the 
lingua geral (KG, 1, 98), wourali (Waterton), woralli (Brown), 
woorara (Bancroft), etc. There is no evidence of its use among the 
Warrau. Walter Raleigh was the first to acquire certain information 
of the existence of a terrible and swiftly acting poison known as 
ourari, while Humboldt was the first to furnish authentic news of 
its manufacture. It formed the subject of many fables told by the 
early missionaries. That mixed up with it were the fangs of the 
most poisonous snakes, dangerous ants; that to test its strength an 
arrow tipped with the poison would be stuck into a young tree, and 
if the tree died within three days it was of the requisite quality 
(SR, 1, 445-447). Gumilla gives a hearsay account of its manufac- 
ture, in the course of which he says they employ some old woman, 
who regularly dies from the vapor arising out of the pots, whereupon 
they then substitute another woman, who may or may not escape its 
fatal effects. He then continues: To test it when manufactured the 
cacique, dipping the end of a rod into it, places it close to (but with- 
out touching) the blood flowing from a wound purposely made for 
the occasion by one of the young men, either in thigh, leg, or arm; 
if the blood “runs back” into the incision, the poison is first class, 
but if it remains in statu quo or continues to flow. the curare has to be 
put on the fire again (G, m, 124-132). The preparation of the 
poison and the various ingredients differ in each tribe which makes it. 
Strychnos of various species are employed (as essential), but the 
towifera is the most deadly, and, growing as it does in the Makusi 
country, these Indians have the reputation of manufacturing the best 
article. Their poison takes but a few minutes to act, while that made 
on the Rio Negro and Orinoco may take hours. Von Martius de- 
scribed its preparation on the Amazon and Yapura, Poeppig in Peru 
and Chile, and Humboldt from the Orinoco at Esmeralda, but ap- 
parently in all three cases different ingredients were used. At Es- 
meralda the patriarch of the only family left when Schomburgk’s 
brother subsequently visited there in 1839 said that he used to get 
his poison from the Guinau and Maiongkong. They made it from 
the Rouwhamon guianensis Aubl. or Strychnos cogens Benth. (SR, 
1, 445-447). According to Gumilla, the only nation on the Orinoco 
who knew the secret of manufacture was the Caberre. He believed the 
poison to be identical with that met with on the lower Amazon among 
the Tapajoso Indians (mentioned by Father Acufia), who either made 
it themselves or received it in barter (G,1, 127). On the other hand, 
in Bates’s day the Indians living on the banks of the Tapajos were 
ignorant of curare, the drug being prepared only by tribes living 
on the rivers flowing into the upper Amazons from the north 
(HWB, 187). As a matter of fact the Rio de Solimoes, 7. ¢., upper 
