was not pleasant to contemplate, but as I had found the word of
these Indians to be always good, I believed I was safe. They were
never false and they hated falsehood. True, they were cunning, but
once their friend always their friend, through thick and thin. And
the Chief had promised that I should not be eaten, either fried or
stewed! Therefore I slept in peace.

I had long desired to see the hunters prepare the mysterious wourahli
poison, which acts so quickly and painlessly, and which allows the
game killed by it to be eaten without interfering with the nutritive
qualities. Only three men in this village understood the proper mixing
of the ingredients, although everybody knew the two plants from which
the poisonous juices were obtained. One of these is a vine that grows
close to the creeks. The stem is about two inches in diameter and
covered with a rough greyish bark. It yields several round fruits,
shaped like an apple, containing seeds imbedded in a very bitter
pulp. The other is also a vine and bears small bluish flowers, but it
is only the roots of this that are used. These are crushed and steeped
in water for several days. The three men in our village who understood
the concoction of this poison collected the plants themselves once
a month. When they returned from their expedition they set to work
at once scraping the first named vine into fine shavings and mixing
these in an earthen jar with the crushed pulp of the roots of the
second plant. The pot is then placed over a fire and kept simmering
for several hours. At this stage the shavings are removed and thrown
away as useless and several large black ants, the _Tucandeiras_, are
added. This is the ant whose bite is not only painful but absolutely
dangerous to man. The concoction is kept boiling slowly until the
next morning, when it has assumed a thick consistency of a brown
colour and very bitter to the taste. The poison is then tried on some