THE VEGETATION OF THE VIRGIN-FOREST. 
131 
come by the effcctii^e alkaloid — the ourariu — beiug extracted. This is 
about twenty times as powerful as the mury, and has been used success- 
fully in the treatment of tetanus. The Indians shoot birds and monkeys, 
Avhich they wish to tame, with very Aveak curare, rousing them from 
the lethargy which ovei'powers them with large doses of salt or sugar- 
juice ; and this treatment is said to be very effective also in the 
reduction of their wildness. 
It is a remarkable fact that the Indians on the right shore of the 
Amazon neither prepare nor use the poison, though the plauts that 
supply the cliief ingredients are certainly found there as well as on 
the left shore, on Avhich tribes differing widely in customs and language 
use the subtle weapon. It Avould be difficult to say by what chance 
their ancestors first came to prepare it, as the poisonous qualities of 
the plants, before their sap is concentrated by boiling, arc by no means 
very strikiug. 
It certainly Avas a great invention in aid of their hunting, on 
which chiefly they depended for food; and we can well imagine that 
they took some trouble to improve it: but how came they to prepare 
the guarana, resembling tea and coffee in its effects, from an insignificant- 
looking dry fruit of the forest ? Some weary and famished hunter must 
have tried the unpalatable beans, and found that they wonderfully 
strengthened and refreshed him, and thence must have ensued the 
collection and bruising of the fmits and the planting of the seeds near 
their cabins. 
The guarana, prepared from the fruit of the FaulUnia sorl>ilis, is 
a hard, chocolate-brown mass, of a slightly bitter taste, and of no 
smell whatever. It is usually sold in cylindiio pieces of from 10 inches 
to a foot in length, in which the half-bruised almond-hke seeds are 
still distinguishable ; the more homogencoxis and the harder the mass, 
the better is its quality. To render it eatable, or rather drinlcablc, it 
is rasped as fine as possible on the rough, bony roof of the mouth of 
the sudis gigas (pha-rucu), and mixed Avith a little sugar and water. 
A tea-spoonful in a cuj) of warm water is said to be an excellent 
remedy in slight attacks of ague. 
The taste of this beverage, reminding one slightly of almonds, is 
Amry palatable; still it scarcely accounts for the passionate liking 
entertamed for it by the inhabitants of the greater part of South 
America. It must be the stimulating effects of the iiaullinin it contains 
K 2 
