4i6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. XXV 
enough water is added to render it drinkable. Thus 
prepared, its colour is brownish-green, and its taste 
bitter and disagreeable. 
The Use mid Effects of Caapi 
In November 1852 I was present, by special 
invitation, at a Dabocuri or Feast of Gifts, held in 
a malloca or village- house called Urubii-coara 
(Turkey-buzzard's nest), above the first falls of the 
Uaupes ; the village of Panure, where I was then 
residing, being at the base of the same falls, and 
about four miles away from Urubii-coara, following 
the course of the river, which during that space is a 
continuous succession of rapids and cataracts among 
rocky islands. We reached the malloca at nightfall, 
just as the botiitos or sacred trumpets began to 
boom lugubriously within the margin of the forest 
skirting the wide space kept open and clear of weeds 
around the malloca.^ At that sound every female 
outside makes a rush into the house, before the 
botiitos emerge on the open ; for to merely see one 
of them would be to her a sentence of death. We 
found about 300 people assembled, and the dances 
at once commenced. I need not detail the whole 
proceedings, for similar feasts have already been 
described by Mr. Wallace [Travels on the Amazon 
and Rio Negro, pp. 280 and 348). Indeed, there 
^ Some of the trumpets used at this very feast are now in the Museum of 
Vegetable Products at Kew. To get them out of the river Uaupes, when I 
left for Venezuela in March 1853, I wrapped them in mats and put them on 
board myself at dead of night, stowing them under the cabin floor, out of sight of 
my Indian mariners, who would not one of them have embarked with me had 
they known such articles were in the boat. The old Portuguese missionaries 
called these trumpets juruparis or devils — merely a bit of jealousy on their 
part ; the botuto being the only fetish — not worshipped, but held in high 
respect — throughout the whole Negro-Orinoco region. (See figures opposite.) 
