Limited Manufacture of the Poison. 
to the € anuku Banges to barter the urari prepared by its inhabitants for 
other articles. 
951. Yon Martins portrays the manufacture of the poison by the 
Juris, Passes, Tecunas, and other tribes on the Amazon and Yupura.t 
Poeppig describes it from Peru and Chili,* and Humboldt as made in 
Esmeralda on the Orinoco :% but all these tribes, according to the 
accounts given, utilise ingredients completely at variance with one 
another. On visiting Esmeralda in 1S39 my brother found the mission 
that was in so flourishing a condition in Humboldt’s day, occupied by 
but a single family: the old patriarch informed him that he bartered 
his arrow poison from the Indian tribes occupying the watershed of the 
Paramu and Ventuari, particularly from the Guinaus and Maiongkongs. 
Both these tribes whom my brother had already visited call their arrow 
poison Cumarawa and Makuri, but they preferred the Urari manufacf- 
tured by the Macusis, on account of its more rapid effects, to their own. 
The articles of trade which the Arekunas, as already mentioned, receive 
from them for it are the well-known blow-guns or the bare stalks of 
A ru nd inaria Sch o m b urgkii. 
952. During his stay amongst these tribes my brother convinced 
himself that for the main ingredient of their poison they either used 
the bark of Rouliamon guiancnsis Aubl. ( Lasiostoma oirrhosa Willd.) 
or Slrychnos cogens Bentli. But though their poison resembles Urari 
both as regards colour and consistency, it remains far behind it in 
strength, as I have already noted. When my brother showed the 
Guinaus and Maiongkongs some dried specimens of the Strychnos 
tow if era which happened to lie in his herbarium, the plant seemed to be 
completely unknown to them, whilst they immediately recognised the 
examples of Strychnos cogens and Rouliamon and pointed out that these 
were the plants from out of which they manufactured their arrow poison. 
953. In British Guiana also, the manufacture of the arrow poison 
is limited to onlv a few of the tribes. Von Martins, who says the same 
thing of the tribes of Brazil, gives as a reason that these same plants, 
which supply the chief ingredients of the deadly extract though found over 
a large area are not. proportionately distributed, but are present in 
isolated places, for which reason the manufacture of the Urari is 
peculiar to certain tribes and hordes only. As far as the aborigines of 
Guiana are concerned, this statement cannot be valid because, as will be 
seen in the progress of my journey, not only is the Strychnos toxifem 
found on the Pomeroon but other species of Strychnos grow on the 
Barama and Waini, a territory occupied by Warraus, Caribs and 
Arawaks, who do not use arrow-poison and know nothing about the 
properties of the plant. In British Guiana it is only the tribes who use 
the blow-gun as a weapon that know and employ the arrow poison. 
954. During his second stay at Pirara in 1837 my brother was just as 
unsuccessful in becoming witness to the manufacture of the article and 
+ — See Reise in Brasilien Vol. Ill p.1155. 
* — Reise in Peru und Chili Vol. II p.45ß. 
X — Voyages aux Regions Equinoxiales Vol. VIII p.153. 
