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Updated: June 19, 2025
These habitations consist of from four to eight huts, situated on about an acre of ground which they have cleared from the surrounding woods. A few pappaw, cotton, and mountain cabbage-trees are scattered round them. At one of these habitations a small quantity of the wourali-poison was procured. It was in a little gourd.
“Incertus, quo fata ferant, ubi sistera detur.” Kind and gentle reader, if the journey in quest of the wourali-poison has engaged thy attention, probably thou mayst recollect that the traveller took leave of thee at Fort St. Joachim, on the Rio Branco. Shouldst thou wish to know what befell him afterwards, excuse the following uninteresting narrative.
He walked about as usual, and ate his food as though all were right. After an hour had elapsed the bandage was untied, and ten minutes after death overtook him. A she-ass received the wourali-poison in the shoulder, and died apparently in ten minutes. An incision was then made in its windpipe, and through it the lungs were regularly inflated for two hours with a pair of bellows.
It was with difficulty these Indians could be persuaded to part with any of the wourali-poison, though a good price was offered for it; they gave me to understand that it was powder and shot to them, and very difficult to be procured. On the second day after leaving the settlement, in passing along, the Indians show you a place where once a white man lived.
It has been already remarked that in the extensive wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, far away from any European settlement, there is a tribe of Indians who are known by the name of Macoushi. Though the wourali-poison is used by all the South American savages betwixt the Amazons and the Oroonoque, still this tribe makes it stronger than any of the rest.
The wourali-poison destroys life’s action so gently, that the victim appears to be in no pain whatever; and probably, were the truth known, it feels none, saving the momentary smart at the time the arrow enters. A day or two before the Macoushi Indian prepares his poison, he goes into the forest in quest of the ingredients. A vine grows in these wilds, which is called wourali.
Three years elapsed after arriving in England before the ague took its final leave of him. During that time several experiments were made with the wourali-poison. In London an ass was inoculated with it, and died in twelve minutes. The poison was inserted into the leg of another, round which a bandage had been previously tied a little above the place where the wourali was introduced.
The act of preparing this poison is not considered as a common one: the savage may shape his bow, fasten the barb on the point of his arrow, and make his other implements of destruction, either lying in his hammock, or in the midst of his family; but if he has to prepare the wourali-poison, many precautions are supposed to be necessary.
Its existence at best seems doubtful; some affirm that there is such a place, and others deny it. “Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est.” Having now reached the Portuguese inland frontier, and collected a sufficient quantity of the wourali-poison, nothing remains but to give a brief account of its composition, its effects, its uses, and its supposed antidotes.
The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali-poison; and to reach the inland frontier fort of Portuguese Guiana. It would be a tedious journey for him who wishes to travel through these wilds to set out from Stabroek on foot. The sun would exhaust him in his attempts to wade through the swamps, and the mosquitos at night would deprive him of every hour of sleep.
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