ROTH] CRIME AND PUNISHMENT - 563 
surface. This is collected and kept, not in reeds or canes, but in 
the hollow long bones of ‘ tiger,’ monkey, or ‘lion.’ When giving 
a drinking party and while handing the calabash to his victim, 
the murderer, having previously placed some of this fatty scum 
under his thumb-nail (sec. 279), dexterously dips the digit into the 
drink. Eaten or drunk in small quantity it infallibly kills the per- 
son, reducing the body before death to a living skeleton, with slow 
and continuous fever and marked brightness of the eyes” (G, 11, 
138-140). The Surinam Carib are likewise said to have known how 
to prepare a potent poison by letting boil a large number of poison 
ants for a long while in a pot of water. When the water was now 
cooled, a poisonous fatty layer was found on top of it. Further- 
more, some old Indian women are said to know a poison that is so 
powerful that anyone who drinks of it succumbs within a few sec- 
onds with the most terrible pains. Another poison of less strength 
is used by female rivals to make away with one another. Or they 
sometimes offer the poison to their faithless lover. They hold it then 
between the finger and nail while they offer the calabash with the 
hand. This poison is said to be a white powder, just like the so- 
called Wisi (sec. 735) of the Negroes. The donké (? don’t care”) 
poison, so well known in Surinam, is said to be indigenous among 
the Indians (PEN, 1, 55). It certainly does seem somewhat extraor- 
dinary that these stories of “ doctoring” the drink with the thumb- 
nail on the Orinoco should be told a century later of the Surinam 
Negroes, and up to a comparatively few years ago of the Akawai In- 
dians of our own colony; but such is indeed the case. Thus Stedman 
writes that in the art of poisoning’ not even the Akawai Indians are 
more expert. They [Negroes] can carry it under their nails, and by 
- only dipping their thumb into a tumbler of water, which they offer as 
a beverage to the object of their revenge, they infuse a slow but certain 
death. More than this, the same author, in a footnote, states that after 
the most scrupulous inquiry, and even ocular demonstration, he can 
offer the above as literally true (St, 1,266). In connection also with 
the hurubuh arrow poison of the Akawai, Dance adds that a little 
pressed in between the extremity of the thumb and thumb-nail, and 
thus conveyed to the paiwarri bowl, is said to poison the drinker 
(Da, 332). Here is another of Gumilla’s alleged poisons, obtained 
from a particular kind of serpent very swift in its movements with 
a special ornament in a curl of fine hair which indicates the number 
of years that its head has borne them. A single hair cut up into 
smal] bits and placed in a mouthful of food causes most violent 
results—blood vomiting and death of the victim (G, m, 143). The 
same story is repeated by Father van Coll for the Surinam Carib. 
Perhaps, however, as Penard suggests, the Indians mean to imply 
the poison-glands which are found on the head of every poisonous 
