434 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
of imagination helps his recovery. If the patient 
dies, the peii attributes it either to the implacable 
Yawahoo or to the influence of some inimical peii." 
(A7t Essay on the History of Gtiayana, by Dr. 
Edward Bancroft, 1769, p. 310.) 
Long before Bancroft's time the use of the 
maraca and of tobacco by Brazilian payes was 
described by Thevet, as follows : " Existimant enim, 
cum hunc fructum (quem Maraka et Tamaraka 
nuncupant) manibus pertractant, crepitantemque 
ob Mayzi grana injecta audiunt, cum suo se Toupan, 
id est, Deo sermones conferre atque ab eo quodam 
responsa accipere, sic a suis Paygi (divinatorum 
genus est, qui suffitu herbae Petun, et quibusdam 
obmurmurationibus illorum Tamaraka divinam 
facultatem attribuunt tribuere perhibent) persuasi."^ 
The accounts given by the early missionaries of 
the doings of the payes are seldom full or reliable. 
Those pious men regarded them as the great 
obstacle to the reception of the Christian faith by 
the natives, and always wrote of them with a 
certain impatience and disgust, under the belief (no 
doubt sincere) that the payes had direct dealings 
with the devil. But the cure of disease by suction 
is alluded to by missionaries in every part of South 
America. In the Lettres Edifiantes et Citrietises, 
consisting of selections from the correspondence of 
missionaries in various heathen countries, published 
with the sanction of the holy see, there is this 
note about the medicine-men of the Moxos Indians: 
" L'unique soulagement qu'ils se procurent dans 
^ Thevetus, as quoted by Chusius, in Aromatiun et Sinipliciiivi alicpiot . . . 
Hisioria. Auctore Garcia ab Horto, Medico Lusitanico. Ed. Ciusio. 
Antverpii.^?, 1579. 
