travel, brother to the cacique Toparimaca, told me that those were
called the plains of the Sayma, and that the same level reached to
Cumana and Caracas, in the West Indies, which are a hundred and twenty
leagues to the north, and that there inhabited four principal nations.
The first were the Sayma, the next Assawai, the third and greatest
the Wikiri, by whom Pedro Hernandez de Serpa, before mentioned, was
overthrown as he passed with 300 horse from Cumana towards Orenoque in
his enterprise of Guiana. The fourth are called Aroras, and are as black
as negroes, but have smooth hair; and these are very valiant, or rather
desperate, people, and have the most strong poison on their arrows, and
most dangerous, of all nations, of which I will speak somewhat, being a
digression not unnecessary.

There was nothing whereof I was more curious than to find out the true
remedies of these poisoned arrows. For besides the mortality of the
wound they make, the party shot endureth the most insufferable torment
in the world, and abideth a most ugly and lamentable death, sometimes
dying stark mad, sometimes their bowels breaking out of their bellies;
which are presently discoloured as black as pitch, and so unsavory as no
man can endure to cure or to attend them. And it is more strange to
know that in all this time there was never Spaniard, either by gift or
torment, that could attain to the true knowledge of the cure, although
they have martyred and put to invented torture I know not how many
of them. But everyone of these Indians know it not, no, not one among
thousands, but their soothsayers and priests, who do conceal it, and
only teach it but from the father to the son.

Those medicines which are vulgar, and serve for the ordinary poison,
are made of the juice of a root called tupara; the same also quencheth
marvellously the heat of burning fevers, and healeth inward wounds and