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Curare, or "wourah," the liquor "which kills in a whisper," as the Indians say, is prepared from the sap of one of the euphorbiaceae and the juice of a bulbous strychnos, not to mention the paste of venomous ants and poisonous serpent fangs which they mix with it. "It is indeed a terrible poison," said Manoel. "It attacks at once those nerves by which the movements are subordinated to the will.
And if they found none why clothyard arrows had done Englishmen's work many a time already, and they could do it again, not to mention those same blow-guns and their arrows of curare poison, which, though they might be useless against Spaniards' armor, were far more valuable than muskets for procuring food, from the simple fact of their silence.
This silly story is now refuted; and Guapo not only assured his companions that there was no danger, but even tasted the curare from time to time while in the pan, in order to judge when it was sufficiently concentrated. This he could tell by its taste, as it grew more and more bitter as the evaporation proceeded.
"The cat will be better to test it on than a human being," he replied, with a glance that made me wince, for, after his performance with the curare, I felt that once the scientific furore was on him I might be called upon to become an unwilling martyr to science.
Does it touch thee at all, oh gentle spirit and serene, that we, who never knew thee, love thee yet, and revere thee as a saint of heathendom? Have the dead any delight in the religion they inspire? Id cinerem aut Manes credis curare sepultos?
I say carefully, for had one of these arrows dropped with its poisoned point upon his naked foot, or wounded him elsewhere, he never would have prepared any more curare. Don Pablo, with Dona Isidora and the children, had watched with interest all this process. At first, they were afraid to go near, believing that the fumes of the liquid might be injurious.
The arrow-poisons of South America are not all made from the creeping plant, the mavacure. Among some Indian tribes a root is used called "curare de raiz;" and with others the poison is produced by a mixture of several species of juices from the plant Ambihuasca, tobacco, red pepper, a bark called "barbasco," from a tree of the genus Jacquinia, and a plant of the name "sarnango."
Leslie and I looked at Kennedy, and the horror of the thing sank deep into our minds. Woorali. What was it? "Woorali, or curare," explained Craig slowly, "is the well-known poison with which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip their arrows. Its principal ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxifera tree, which yields also the drug nux vomica, which you, Dr.
This silly story is now refuted; and Guapo not only assured his companions that there was no danger, but even tasted the curare from time to time while in the pan, in order to judge when it was sufficiently concentrated. This he could tell by its taste, as it grew more and more bitter as the evaporation proceeded.
Those few minutes were surcharged with exquisite suffering for the unfortunate victims, but they bore it with stoical silence and composure; and when at length the cacique gave the order for them to rise and march they at once scrambled to their feet and proceeded, in charge of a dozen Indians, fully armed with pocunas, or blowpipes, bows the arrows of which were doubtless poisoned with curare and long spears.
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