XXV 
NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 421 
Orinoco have all told me the same tale, merely with 
slight personal variations. A Brazilian friend said 
that when he once took a full dose of caapi he saw 
all the marvels he had read of in the Arabian 
Nights pass rapidly before his eyes as in a panorama; 
but the final sensations and sights w^ere horrible, as 
they always are. 
At the feast of Urubii-coara I learnt that caapi 
was cultivated in some quantity at a roca a few 
hours' journey down the river, and I went there 
one day to get specimens of the plant, and (if pos- 
sible) to purchase a sufficient quantity of the stems 
to be sent to England for analysis ; in both which 
objects I was successful. There were about a dozen 
well-grown plants of caapi, twining up to the tree- 
tops along the margin of the roca, and several 
smaller ones. It was fortunately in flower and 
young fruit, and I saw, not without surprise, that 
it belonged to the order Malpighiacese and the 
genus Banisteria, of which I made it out to be an 
undescribed species, and therefore called it Banisteria 
Caapi. My surprise arose from the fact that there 
was no narcotic Malpighiad on record, nor indeed 
any species of that order with strong medicinal 
properties of any kind. Byrsonima — a Malpighi- 
aceous genus that abounds in the Amazon valley — 
includes many species, all handsome little trees, 
with racemes of yellow or rose-coloured flowers, 
followed by small edible but rather insipid drupes. 
Their bark abounds in tannin, and is the usual 
material for tanning leather at Para, as also, by 
the Indians, for dyeing coarse cotton garments a 
red-brown colour. Another genus — Bunchosia — 
grows chiefly on the slopes of the Andes, at from 
