432 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
with him for*the whole of his materia medica, if my 
stock-in-trade would have sufficed. 
Rochefort i^Histoi7^e Natu7^elle et Morale des Isles 
Antilles, Rotterdam, 1665), says: "Their Boyes or 
medicine-men practise both medicine and devilry. 
They are resorted to : i, to cause punishment to 
fall on some one who has wronged or injured the 
applicant ; 2, to cure some disease ; 3, to foretell 
the advent of a war ; 4, to drive out the Maboya or 
Evil Spirit" (p. 472). 
Their functions are very much the same at the 
present day among the native tribes of the main- 
land as they were two or three hundred years ago 
in the isles of the Caribbean Sea. I propose, in 
what follows, to review briefly the use made by the 
payes of their materia medica in the treatment of 
disease. 
The apparatus and materia medica of the medi- 
cine-men of the region lying adjacent to the Upper 
Rio Negro and Orinoco, and extending thence 
westward to the Andes, are chiefly the following : — 
The Maraca or Rattle. 
Tobacco, juice and smoke. 
Niopo (or Parica), powdered seeds in snuff 
Caapi (or Aya-huasca), stems in infusion. 
I. TJie Maraca or Rattle. — This is the hard 
globose or oval pericarp of the Crescentia Cttjete, or 
sometimes of a gourd, tastefully engraved and per- 
forated in geometrical or fantastic designs, and the 
lines usually coloured. To make it rattle, a few 
small bright-red or red-and-black beans are put 
into it ; those most used on the Uaupes are seeds 
of Batesia erythrosperma (Spruce) and of Ormosia 
coccinea (Jack). I have seen the maraca used in 
