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As the urari plant grows in the tribe, I was aware of the preparation of this poison for arrow, which I had occasion to watch here. We were engaged in this occupation, when a loud howling followed by shouting, made us run, frightened, to the other side of the village. We saw an open hole, as three busy Indians buried there the corpse of one of the villagers.

Already, the night before, I had been called to prescribe a "remedy for whites," caryba-poranga; but I found the patient in the agonies of death. He suffered from dropsy, an infarction of the abdominal organs. The dead man was then shrunken, his head tucked between his bent, raising his knees, connected between pieces of pebbles, forming a bundle (exactly, therefore, in the same position where one usually finds the bodies wrapped in ponchos, in the liuacas of Peru),

and was buried in a pit four feet deep in the middle of the hut (among other habits, this is also common among the savages of Canada). Then the sisters of the dead man and two men, who lived in the same hut, entered there and began to tread on the earth, making terrible roars. The funeral ceremony lasted half an hour; I departed from there with my heart constrained by my own burial and by the lamentations of the gravediggers, especially of the sisters, who, among violent soliloquies, continually shouted the questions: “Now how will you hunt monkeys for me, who will bring me turtles?" These words and others that were almost bestial expressions, and it seemed that they were all the more excited the more they pounded the grave.

(I) The arrow poison of the Japura Indians is the juice of a slender tree, the apui-rana (Rouhamon guyanensis, Aubl.), a Strichnos, L., which in the Tupi language is called urariuva.

The bark, which had been soaked and squeezed with the hands of the Juris-tabasco, and the yellowish juice thickened in a flat dish, while the aqueous extract identical to the root of a pepper

Piper peltatum

of a tree that I do not know (traira-moira, i.e., "tree of the woodpecker"), of the bark of the bush coculo (Coculos Jneme, M.) and of a climbing fig tree, are poured together in equal quantities. This extract, mixed to the consistency of thick syrup, takes from the fire a dark brown tint; then it is poured into small pots, each containing about two ounces, and in the shadow of the hut is left to cool. Previously, the Indian put in each pot a kiynha-avi pepper, and the urari is ready. The Indians revive it again, when it weakens with time, adding especially chilli pepper and the root of Piper geniculatum.

Undoubtedly, these four plants, introduced as a complement, are of minor importance, and could be replaced by others. According to information from several Brazilians, other substances are also added, for example: milk of Euphorbia ipecacua,

Euphorbia ipecacua

with Hura crepitans, or the astringent fruits of Guatteria veneficiorum, M., and,

Guatteria

the superstitious Indians add the first frog that was heard to croak on that day, great black ant or the teeth of a peccary.

Pecari tajacu, the peccary

The experience in Manacaru has proved to me that the curare of Esmeraldes, in the Orinoco, the wurai of Surina and the urari of Japura contains an initial and essential principle, the same Strychnia of the bark. This group of plants also offers a very poisonous substance in the "Saint-Inacio-faience" and the "nutz-vomica", which is probably the active principle of Strychnine or a substance with which it is related. The Indians, who wanted to commit suicide, swallowed it in great quantity, without feeling a bad effect, until it reached the stomach. Great doses of sugar, salt or astringents are the remedies; with complete absorption of the substance, these antidotes are of no use, and the wounded, with the diminution of the animal heat and the process of respiration, succumbs to a nervous apoplexy within a few minutes.

Coculus

Dr. Spix brought from Tabatinga, from a climbing shrub (in Tupi urari-sjpo), a menispermacea, perhaps Coculos amazonum, M., which is probably a picrotoxin. The important essential ingredient of this poison is soluble in water, as well as in the spirit of wine, a method used by the Juris, Miranhas, and other Indians of the Japura and Rio Negro.

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