THE URART, OR ARROW POISON OF THE INDIANS. 407 
had at various times occasion to see the effect of the poison, 
says, that the people who had been wounded became ravingly 
mad, biting themselves in the paroxysm of pain until death 
ended their sufferings. Herrera confirms this account, and 
asserts that the ingredients of the poison consist of a root 
which is found on the sea- shore, and has a very bad smell, of 
black stinging ants as large as beetles, spiders, nasty hairy 
caterpillars of the size of half a finger, which sting as badly 
as the ants, bats’ wings, the neck and head of a poisonous sea- 
fish called tabrino, toads, and necks of snakes, which in- 
gredients were boiled with the fruits of the manzanilla by a 
male or female slave outside of the village ; for the fumes 
which arose from these poisonous materials were so injurious, 
that the person who had to prepare the poison fell ahvays a 
victim and died. This historian attests already, that in order 
to be effective, it must come in contact with the blood ; if 
this be the case, and let the w T ound be as small, as that in- 
flicted by a pin, the wounded person pays for it with his life. 
The remedy then known w T as to apply fire to the wound, and 
to keep a strict diet and be abstemious. Others pretended, in 
harmony with the superstitions of those times, that the faeces 
of the person who had been wounded should be taken 
inw T ardly in pills or otherwise. 
Here w T e have, then, in all its prominent features, the 
account surrounded by superstition of the component parts 
and the preparation of the arrow poison, which, repeated by 
the fathers Gumilta and Gili, has become the text-book from 
whence many w r ho have since written on the arrows poison 
have taken their account of the preparation. 
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his 6 Discovery of the Empire of 
Guiana/ observes : “ There was nothing whereof I w*as more 
curious than to finde out the true remedies of these poisoned 
arrow'es, for besides the mortalitie of the wound they make, 
the partie shot indureth the most insufferable torment in the 
world, and abideth a most vglie and lamentable death, some- 
times dying starke mad, &c. * * * Some of the Spaniards 
have been cured in ordinary w 7 ounds of the common 
poisoned arrowes wdth the juice of garlike, but this is a 
general rule for all men that shall hereafter travell the Indies, 
w 7 here poisoned arrowes are used, that they must abstaine 
from drinke, for if they take any licor into their body, as 
they shall be maruellously provoked thereunto by drought, 
I say if they drink before the wound be dressed or soone vpon 
it, there is no w T ay wdth them but present death.” 
The interest respecting this celebrated poison, and the 
nature of its ingredients, was kept alive. Every traveller 
returning from Guiana, from the Amazon, and the Brazil, 
