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whose name and quality I have never found out. This done he rambles about the forest until he is able to find two kinds of wasps or bees (whichever they are); one is very big and black the sting of which causes a high fever, and which generally has its nest on the ground; the other is little and red, stings like a nettle and has its nest under the leaves of a tree. If he has in store some teeth of the _sendok_ snake, or of any other equally venomous, he now returns to the village, otherwise he looks for one, kills it and possesses himself of its fangs. Having thus all the necessary ingredients, the Sakai begins to pound the roots into a paste. This mass he then puts into a tube stopped up by leaves which lets pass a liquid but not a substance. Keeping this primitive filter suspended over the receptacle to be used for boiling, he slowly empties some water into it which soaking through the paste becomes of a brown colour before it reaches the vessel beneath. Terminated the filtering process he takes the two bulbous plants and squeezing them in his hand he sprinkles as much of their juice as he thinks fit, into the same vessel. The serpent's teeth and the bees are then pounded, they too, and cast in with all the rest which is at once placed on a slow fire. When the mixture begins to boil the Sakai skims off the impurities floating on the surface and adds a little more _legop_ if it seems to him necessary, taking great care, meanwhile, not to breath or to be enveloped by the fumes rising from the pot. [Illustration: Root of the poisonous creeper "Legop". _p._ 212.] The poison is lifted off the fire as soon as it has got to the consistency of a syrup and is of a dark reddish colour, the darts are dipped into it and its virulence is put to the test without waste of time. If the proof is satisfactory the thick fluid is poured into bamboo receptacles, covered with leaves, and a piece of deer-skin fastened over them with a band of _scudiscio_ and finally the vases are collocated in the driest corner of the hut, from whence from time to time, they are carried near the fire to prevent that their contents should lose force through humidity. * * * * * Now the question is this: do the ingredients which the Bretak Sakai believes indispensable in this concoction augment the virulence of the _legop_? I am inclined to doubt it a great deal as I do not think those two plants containing th
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