Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Raleigh, About The End Of The Sixteenth Century, Had Heard Of
Urari* As Being A Vegetable Substance With Which Arrows Were Envenomed
(* In Tamanac Marana, In Maypure Macuri.); Yet No Fixed Notions Of
This Poison Had Reached Europe.
The missionaries Gumilla and Gili had
not been able to penetrate into the country where the curare is
manufactured.
Gumilla asserts that this preparation was enveloped in
great mystery; that its principal ingredient was furnished by a
subterranean plant with a tuberous root, which never puts forth
leaves, and which is called specially the root (raiz de si misma);
that the venomous exhalations which arise from the manufacture are
fatal to the lives of the old women who (being otherwise useless) are
chosen to watch over this operation; finally, that these vegetable
juices are never thought to be sufficiently concentrated till a few
drops produce at a distance a repulsive action on the blood. An Indian
wounds himself slightly; and a dart dipped in the liquid curare is
held near the wound. If it make the blood return to the vessels
without having been brought into contact with them, the poison is
judged to be sufficiently concentrated.
When we arrived at Esmeralda, the greater part of the Indians were
returning from an excursion which they had made to the east, beyond
the Rio Padamo, to gather juvias, or the fruit of the bertholletia,
and the liana which yields the curare. Their return was celebrated by
a festival, which is called in the mission la fiesta de las juvias,
and which resembles our harvest-homes and vintage-feasts. The women
had prepared a quantity of fermented liquor; and during two days the
Indians were in a state of intoxication. Among nations who attach
great importance to the fruit of the palm, and of some other trees
useful for the nourishment of man, the period when these fruits are
gathered is marked by public rejoicings, and time is divided according
to these festivals, which succeed one another in a course invariably
regular. We were fortunate enough to find an old Indian more temperate
than the rest, who was employed in preparing the curare poison from
freshly-gathered plants. He was the chemist of the place. We found at
his dwelling large earthen pots for boiling the vegetable juice,
shallower vessels to favour the evaporation by a larger surface, and
leaves of the plantain-tree rolled up in the shape of our filters, and
used to filtrate the liquids, more or less loaded with fibrous matter.
The greatest order and neatness prevailed in this hut, which was
transformed into a chemical laboratory. The old Indian was known
throughout the mission by the name of the poison-master (amo del
curare). He had that self-sufficient air and tone of pedantry of which
the pharmacopolists of Europe were formerly accused. "I know," said
he, "that the whites have the secret of making soap, and manufacturing
that black powder which has the defect of making a noise when used in
killing animals. The curare, which we prepare from father to son, is
superior to anything you can make down yonder (beyond sea). It is the
juice of an herb which kills silently, without any one knowing whence
the stroke comes."
This chemical operation, to which the old man attached so much
importance, appeared to us extremely simple. The liana (bejuco) used
at Esmeralda for the preparation of the poison, bears the same name as
in the forests of Javita. It is the bejuco de Mavacure, which is
gathered in abundance east of the mission, on the left bank of the
Orinoco, beyond the Rio Amaguaca, in the mountainous and rocky tracts
of Guanaya and Yumariquin. Although the bundles of bejuco which we
found in the hut of the Indian were entirely bare of leaves, we had no
doubt of their being produced by the same plant of the strychnos
family (nearly allied to the rouhamon of Aublet) which we had examined
in the forest of Pimichin.* (* I may here insert the description of
the curare or bejuco de Mavacure, taken from a manuscript, yet
unpublished, of my learned fellow-labourer M. Kunth, corresponding
member of the Institute. "Ramuli lignosi, oppositi, ramulo altero
abortivo, teretiusculi, fuscescenti-tomentosi, inter petiolos lineola
pilosa notati, gemmula aut processu filiformi (pedunculo?) terminati.
FOLIA opposita, bereviter petiolata, ovato-oblonga, acuminata,
intergerrima, reticulato-triplinervia, nervo medio subtus prominente,
membranacea, ciliata, utrinque glabra, nervo medio
fuscescente-tomentoso, lacte viridia, subtus pallidiora, 1 1/2 to 2
1/2 pollices longa, 8 to 9 lineas lata. PETIOLI lineam longi,
tomentosi, inarticulati.") The mavacure is employed fresh or dried
indifferently during several weeks. The juice of the liana, when it
has been recently gathered, is not regarded as poisonous; possibly it
is so only when strongly concentrated. It is the bark and a part of
the alburnum which contain this terrible poison. Branches of the
mavacure four or five lines in diameter are scraped with a knife, and
the bark that comes off is bruised, and reduced into very thin
filaments on the stone employed for grinding cassava. The venomous
juice being yellow, the whole fibrous mass takes that colour. It is
thrown into a funnel nine inches high, with an opening four inches
wide. This funnel was of all the instruments of the Indian laboratory
that of which the poison-master seemed to be most proud. He asked us
repeatedly if, por alla (out yonder, meaning in Europe) we had ever
seen anything to be compared to this funnel (embudo). It was a leaf of
the plantain-tree rolled up in the form of a cone, and placed within
another stronger cone made of the leaves of the palm-tree. The whole
of this apparatus was supported by slight frame-work made of the
petioles and ribs of palm-leaves. A cold infusion is first prepared by
pouring water on the fibrous matter which is the ground bark of the
mavacure. A yellowish water filters during several hours, drop by
drop, through the leafy funnel.
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