THE AMAZON- STONE. 
:J95 
medicine ia very considerable. AVo see by the works of 
Clusius, that at tbe beginning of the Conquista, Eui'ope 
obtained this salutary medicament from the Mexican coast 
of Honduras and the port of Guayaquil. The trade in zarza 
is now more active in those ports which have interior 
communications with the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the 
Amazon. 
The trials made in several botanical gardens of Europe 
prove that the Smilax glauca of V irginia, which it is pre- 
tended is the S. sarsaparilla of Linnaeus, may be cultivated 
in the open air, wherever the mean winter temperature 
rises above six or seven degrees of the centigrade ther- 
mometer* : but those species that possess the most active 
virtues belong exclusively to the torrid zone, and require a 
much higher degree of heat. In reading the works of Clu- 
sius, it can scarcely be conceived why our writers on the 
Materia Medica persist in considering a plant of the United 
States as the most ancient type of the officinal species of the 
genus smilax. 
We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio 
Negro some of those green stones, known by the name ot 
“Amazon stones,” because the natives pretend, according to 
an ancient tradition, that they come from the country “ of the 
women without husbands ( Cvuynantainsecouima ), or women 
living alone ( Jikecmbemnof ).” We were told at San Carlos, 
and in the neighbouring villages, that the sources of the 
Orinoco which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in the 
missions' of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources 
of the Rio Branco are the native spots of the green stones. 
These statements confirm the report of an old soldier of the 
• The winter temperature at London and Paris is 4 - 2° and 3'7°; at 
Montpelier, 0-7° ; at Rome, 7‘7°. In that part of Mexico, and the Terra 
firms, where we saw the most active species of the sarsaparilla growing, 
(that which supplies the trade of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies) 
the temperature is from twenty to twenty-six degrees. The roots of 
another family of monocotyledons (of some cyperaceie) possess also dia- 
phoretic and resolvent properties. The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, &c. 
furnish the German sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusius, 
Europe received the first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of 
Puna, opposite Guayaquil. 
41 This word is of the Tamanac language ; these women are the so If 
Dotitic of the Italian missionaries. 
