XXV NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 423 
of the boxes quite ruined. The bundle of Caapi would 
presumably have quite lost its virtue from the same 
cause, and I do not know that it was ever analysed 
chemically ; but some portion of it should be in the 
Kew Museum at this day. 
Caapi is used by all the nations on the river 
Uaupes, some of whom speak languages differing 
in toto from each other, and have besides (in other 
respects) widely different customs. But on the Rio 
Negro, if it has ever been used, it has fallen into 
disuse ; nor did I find it anywhere among nations 
of the true Carib stock, such as the Barres, Bani- 
huas, Mandauacas, etc., with the solitary exception 
of the Tarianas, who have intruded a little way 
within the river Uaupes, and have probably learnt 
to use caapi from their Tucano neighbours. 
When I was at the cataracts of the Orinoco, in 
June 1854, I again came upon caapi, under the 
same name, at an encampment of the wild Guahibos, 
on the savannas of Maypures. These Indians not 
only drink the infusion, like those of the Uaupes, 
but also chew the dried stem, as some people do 
tobacco. From them I learnt that all the native 
dwellers on the rivers Meta, Vichada, Guaviare, 
Sipapo, and the intervening smaller rivers, possess 
caapi, and use it in precisely the same way. 
In May 1857, after a sojourn of two years in the 
North-Eastern Peruvian Andes, I reached, by way 
of the river Pastasa, the great forest of Canelos, at 
the foot of the volcanoes Cotopaxi, Llanganati, and 
Tunguragua ; and in the villages of Canelos and 
Puca-yacu — inhabited chiefly by tribes of Zaparos — 
I again saw Caapi planted. It was the identical 
species of the Uaupes, but under a different name, 
