448 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
famished, for, although there was food, nobody 
would cook it, and the guests sustained themselves 
entirely on cauim and ipadii. At short intervals, 
ipadu was handed round in a large calabash, with 
a tablespoon, for each one to help himself, the 
customary dose being a couple of spoonfuls. After 
each dose they passed some minutes without 
opening their mouths, adjusting the ipadii in the 
recesses of their cheeks and inhaling its delightful 
influences. I could scarcely resist laughing at 
their swollen cheeks and grave looks during these 
intervals of silence, which, however, had two or 
three times the excellent effect of checking an 
incipient quarrel. The ipadii is not sucked, but 
allowed to find its way insensibly into the stomach 
along with the saliva. I tried a spoonful twice, 
but it had little effect on me, and assuredly did not 
render me insensible to the calls of hunger, although 
it did in some measure to those of sleep. It had 
very little of either smell or taste, and in both 
reminded me of weak tincture of henbane. I could 
never make out that the habitual use of ipadii had 
any ill results on the Rio Negro ; but in Peru its 
excessive use is said to seriously injure the coats 
of the stomach, an effect probably owing to the 
lime taken along with it. 
The Use of Giiarand as a Tonic 
Another powerful nervous tonic and subnarcotic 
is cupana or guarana, which is prepared from the 
seed of a twining plant of the family of Sapindacese. 
The first definite information about it was obtained 
by Humboldt and Bonpland iri the south of 
