350 
Limited Distribution of tue Urari, 
Indians, who naturally take care to keep the manufacture of the poison 
as dark as they possibly can. 
DdS. It was on account of these varying reports that my brother 
fe.lt induced to devote his utmost attention to the subject on his first 
expedition to the interior of British Guiana. He was fortunate enough 
to see a portion of his wish realised already on the upper Bupununi, for 
lie at least got to know botanically the dangerous plant that supplies the 
chief ingredient for the Urari. In the Wapisiana settlement of Aripai 
on the Bupununi, in 3° Lat. North, he was informed that the plant grew 
on the Canuku Banges not a day and a half distant from the village, 
and in company with some Indians left for the spot indicated. After a 
very difficult march they reached at Mount Mamesna a Wapisiana 
settlement where they spent the night and, besides that, found to his 
great joy, a resident who not only knew accurately the habitat of the 
plant, but also understood the manufacture of its poison. The latter 
expressed his willingness to fetch him out branches and bark of the same 
in sufficient quantity, but declined to take my brother to where the plants 
grew : it Avas only by means of many a gift that he could be finally 
prevailed upon to act as guide. On the following morning they took 
their departure and after many difficulties, for the way led through a 
rocky terrain, discovered the first, plant. Although this showed neither 
flowers nor fruit, my brother recognised in it a species of Strychnos which 
he named Strychnos toxiferaA Nevertheless the Indian could not be 
induced by any manner of means to manufacture the poison in his 
presence and so my brother had to content himself with the accounts given 
him of its preparation. It was to be expected that the many mysterious 
details of the earlier travellers in British Guiana, of Waterton for 
example, were too inrooted amongst the Colonists for them to believe 
the simple method of preparation with which my brother furnished them 
on his return. The certainty that only the vegetable extract of a plant 
gave rise to the terrible effects was doubted, these being ascribed to the 
poison-fangs of snakes, to ants, and to peppers. 
019. Tn 1837, during the second expedition which my brother under- 
took up the Esse'quibo. he found opportunity for again visiting the region 
of the Urari plant. During his stay in Pirara he learnt that in the 
neighbourhood of the Canuku Mountains there lived a Macusi Indian, 
who was recognised as the most celebrated Urari manufacturer of the 
whole tribe. He looked him ur> and by means of certain promises, 
succeeded in prevailing upon him to prepare the poison in his presence. 
In company with the poison maker he undertook beforehand an excursion 
to the western extremity of the Canuku range, where the plant was also 
said to grow, so as to obtain from there not only the material for the 
poison, but also perhaps to find the plant in flower: the Ilamikipang 
was the second habitat of the plant, about 18 miles in a south-easterly 
direction from the place where he saw it for the first time in 1835. 
Under the same difficulties with which I subsequently had to contend 
they also obtained the first plants ; he indeed now again found the plant 
f— See Robert Hermann. Schomburgh’s Reise in Guiana und am Orineko p.94. 
