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