The arrows are from four to five feet in length, made of a yellow reed without a knot or joint. It is found in great plenty up and down throughout Guiana. A piece of hard wood about nine inches long is inserted into the end of the reed, and fastened with cotton well waxed. A square hole an inch deep is then made in the end of this piece of hard wood, done tight round with cotton to keep it from splitting. Into this square hole is fitted a spike of coucourite-wood, poisoned, and which may be kept there or taken out at pleasure. A joint of bamboo, about as thick as your finger, is fitted on over the poisoned spike to prevent accidents and defend it from the rain, and is taken off when the arrow is about to be used. Lastly, two feathers are fastened the other end of the reed to steady it in its flight.
Besides his bow and arrows, the Indian carries a little box made of bamboo which holds a dozen or fifteen poisoned spikes six inches long. They are poisoned in the following manner: a small piece of wood is dipped in the poison, and with this they give the spike a first coat. It is then exposed to the sun or fire. After it is dry it receives another coat, and then dried again; after this a third coat, and sometimes a fourth.
They take great care to put the poison on thicker at the middle than at the sides, by which means the spike retains the shape of a two-edged sword. It is rather a tedious operation to make one of these arrows complete, and as the Indian is not famed for industry, except when pressed by hunger, he has hit upon a plan of preserving his arrows which deserves notice.
About a quarter of an inch above the part where the coucourite spike is fixed into the square hole he cuts it half through, and thus, when it has entered the animal, the weight of the arrow causes it to break off there, by which means the arrow falls to the ground uninjured, so that, should this be the only arrow he happens to have with him and should another shot immediately occur, he has only to take another poisoned spike out of his little bamboo box, fit it on its arrow, and send it to its destination.
Thus armed with deadly poison, and hungry as the hyæna, he ranges through the forest in quest of the wild-beasts' track. No hound can act a surer part. Without clothes to fetter him or shoes to bind his feet, he observes the footsteps of the game where an European eye could not discern the smallest vestige. He pursues it through all its turns and windings with astonishing perseverance, and success generally crowns his efforts. The animal, after receiving the poisoned arrow, seldom retreats two hundred paces before it drops.
In passing over-land from the Essequibo to the Demerara we fell in with a herd of wild hogs. Though encumbered with baggage and fatigued with a hard day's walk, an Indian got his bow ready and let fly a poisoned arrow at one of them. It entered the cheek-bone and broke off. The wild hog was found quite dead about one hundred and seventy paces from the place where he had been shot. He afforded us an excellent and wholesome supper.
Thus the savage of Guiana, independent of the common weapons of destruction, has it in his power to prepare a poison by which he can generally ensure to himself a supply of animal food: and the food so destroyed imbibes no deleterious qualities. Nature has been bountiful to him. She has not only ordered poisonous herbs and roots to grow in the unbounded forests through which he strays, but has also furnished an excellent reed for his arrows, and another still more singular for his blow-pipe, and planted trees of an amazing hard, tough and elastic texture out of which he forms his bows. And in order that nothing might be wanting, she has superadded a tree which yields him a fine wax and disseminated up and down a plant not unlike that of the pine-apple which affords him capital bow-strings.
Having now followed the Indian in the chase and described the poison, let us take a nearer view of its action and observe a large animal expiring under the weight of its baneful virulence.
Many have doubted the strength of the wourali poison. Should they ever by chance read what follows, probably their doubts on that score will be settled for ever.
In the former experiment on the dog some faint resistance on the part of Nature was observed, as if existence struggled for superiority, but in the following instance of the sloth life sunk in death without the least apparent contention, without a cry, without a struggle and without a groan. This was an ai, or three-toed sloth. It was in the possession of a gentleman who was collecting curiosities. He wished to have it killed in order to preserve the skin, and the wourali poison was resorted to as the easiest death.