102 SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES REGIONS. 



whose fruits serve as vessels of all shapes and sizes, also supplies a tissue 

 singularly like cloth, and used as such by the riverine peoples of the upper 

 Orinoco. 



Several vegetable species are highly appreciated for their medicinal pro- 

 perties. The coloradito shrub supplies a bark more efficacious than cinchona 

 itself in the treatment of marsh fevers. A peculiar species of cinchona has also 

 been found in the Merida mountains, and the copanfera officinalis, which fur- 

 nishes the copaiva balsam so efficacious in certain maladies, grows in abundance 

 alonff the banks of the Orinoco, between Bolivar and Caicar. 



In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh brought back an account of the deadly " curare " 

 {urari) poison, which he had received from the Indians of Spanish Guiana. 

 This substance is still prepared in the same region, the present East Venezuela, 

 as well as in Amazonia ; the processes vary, but the plant is everywhere the 

 same, the mavacure [rotidamon guianeiiso), a member of the strychnine family ; 

 with the sap are mixed a few drops of snake poison, producing a black essence 

 with bright cleavage, somewhat like liquorice. The Otomaks were said to 

 rub a little under their nails, thereby causing a mere scratch to be fatal. 

 The strange effect of the poison is, without affecting the sensibility, will, or 

 intellect of the victim, to deprive him of his voice, and then to paralyse, 

 one after the other, the extremities, the face, and thorax, at last extinguishing 

 the eyesight, and thus, so to say, immuring the mental faculties in a corpse.* 



Fauna. 



The Venezuelan fauna belongs partly to the Colombian, partly to the Gruiana 

 zone. The Andean regions, from the Paria peninsula to the snowy Merida 

 range, are inhabited by animals whose centre of dispersion lies farther west, on 

 the plateaux dominating the Magdalena and Cauca valleys. On the other hand, 

 the forms occurring on the llanos, in the valleys beyond the Orinoco, and in the 

 Parima uplands closely resemble those of the Guiana seaboard and of Brazilian 

 Amazonia. It naturally follows that the parting-line between the two zones, 

 that is to say, the southern slopes of the coast ranges and the tracts bordering on 

 the grassy plains, are extremely rich in all forms of animal life. 



The simian familj»^ is represented by sixteen species in the primeval forests of 

 the lowlands and of the lower slopes, scarcely any being met above the line of 

 10,000 feet. The best known, thanks to his horrible morning and evening 

 concerts, is the howling ape {simia nrsina), whose hideous screams dominate all 

 sounds issuing from the woodlands. There are also numerous varieties of the 

 bat, amongst others a fishing bat, which in other respects is identical with the 

 frugivorous bats of India and the Antilles. 



In Venezuela the naturalist meets nearly all the South American species, 



such as the large and small felidse ("tiger," or jaguar, "lion," or puma, ocelot, 



and cats) ; bears of a harmless disposition, living on fiish and honey, and ranging 



in the Sierra de Merida up to 10,000 feet ; the ant-eater {myrmeeophaga juhata), 



* Jean Chaffanjon, Tour du Moi.de, Ivi., p. 307. 



