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448
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
famished, for, although there was food, nobody
would cook it, and the guests sustained themselves
entirely on cauim and ipadii. At short intervals,
ipadii was handed round in a large calabash, with
a tablespoon, for each one to help himself, the
customary dose being a couple of spoonfuls. After
each dose they passed some minutes without
opening their mouths, adjusting the ipadii
in the
recesses of their cheeks and inhaling its delightful
influences. I could scarcely resist laughing at
their swollen cheeks and grave looks during these
intervals of silence, which, however, had two or
three times the excellent effect of checking an
incipient quarrel. The ipadii is not sucked, but
allowed to find its way insensibly into the stomach
along with the saliva. I tried a spoonful twice,
but it had little effect on me, and assuredly did not
render me insensible to the calls of hunger, although
it did in some measure to those of sleep. It had
very little of either smell or taste, and in both
reminded me of weak tincture of henbane. I could
never make out that the habitual use of ipadii had
any ill results on the Rio Negro ;
but
in Peru its
excessive 'use is said to seriously injure the coats
of the stomach, an effect probably owing to the
lime taken along with it.
The Use of Guarand as a Tonic
Another powerful nervous tonic and subnarcotic
is cupana or guarana, which is prepared from the
seed of a twining plant of the family of Sapindacese.
The first definite information about it was obtained
by Humboldt and Bonplancl in the south of