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NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 447
Rio Negro, and I sent a quantity of it to Kew
for analysis. My account of it was published in
Hooker's Journal of Botany for July 1853, and
I here reproduce it. The leaves of ipaclii are pulled
off the branches, one by one, and roasted on the
mandiocca-oven, then pounded in a cylindrical
mortar, 5 or 6 feet in height, made of the lower
part of the trunk of the Pupunha or Peach Palm
(Guilielmia speciosa), the hard root forming the
base and the soft inside being scooped out. It
is made of this excessive length because of the
impalpable nature of the powder, which would
otherwise fly up and choke the operator ; and it is
buried a sufficient depth in the ground to allow of
its being easily worked. The pestle is of proportionate
length, and is made of any hard wood.
When the leaves are sufficiently pounded, the
powder is taken out with a small cuya
fastened to
the end of an arrow. A small quantity of tapioca,
in powder, is mixed with it to give it consistency,
and it is usual to add pounded ashes of Imba-iiba
or Drum tree (Cecropia pcltata], which are saline
and antiseptic. With a chew of ipadii in his cheek,
renewed at intervals of a few hours, an Indian will
go for days without food and sleep.
In April 1852 I assisted, much against my will,
at an Indian feast in a little rocky island at the
foot of the falls of the- Rio Negro ;
for
I had
gone clown the falls to have three or four days'
of the
herborising, and I found my host the pilot
cataracts engaged in the festivities, which neither
he nor my man would leave until the last drop of
cauim (coarse cane- or plantain-spirit) was consumed.
During the two days the feast lasted I was nearly