WILD LIFE AT THE ANTIPODES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 25, 21 June 1890, Page 7

WILD LIFE AT THE ANTIPODES.

How South Sea Islanders Poison their Arrows. By EDWARD WAKEFIELD, late M.H.R. There is in Indian little serpent, only a few inches long, called Echys rarinatn, which is so horribly venomous that its bite is capable of causing death in two or three seconds. Not a single case is known of recovery from the bite of Echys, where the snake has struck its victim on the bare flesh, without any fabric intervening ; but in most instances the sufferer has been paralyzed with intense agony almost instantaneously, the blood has coagulated in the veins and a spasm of the heart has terminate existence almost before any remedy could be even attempted. In British India alone it is shown by carefully collected statistics that more than 20,000 persons are destroyed annually by wild beasts, includingsnakes, and morethanfour-fifthsof thecasualties are attributed to thelatter. It is well-known, too, that snakesare employed among the natives to a terrible extent for purposes of secret murder. A deadly serpent, such as the Echys, or the more notorious, but really less formidable, cobra, is so confined in a hollow bamboo cane that its head just barely protrudes at the end, and the assassin, carrying this diabolical weapon, which looks like a harmless walking staff, in his hand, approaches his enemy quite unsuspected, and touching him unawares with the end of the staff, causes the snake to plunge its lethal fangs into his defenceless flesh. The victim is found dead, perhaps, on his couch or divan, or in a

chair at table, or seated in some lovely secluded garden, where his treacherous foe and he may have retired together to enjoy the shade and the perfume. His death is set down to sunstroke or fever or any other of the sudden diseases that are common in that country ; and, in accordance with the local custom, his body is hurriedly reduced to ashes or consigned to the public leceptable for the dead before any inquiry can be made. A NARROW ESCAPE. A friend of mine, who occupied an important consular post at Singapore, had a very narrow escape from death like this. He had a Malay house steward who alone had access to his bedroom. This man was most apparently devoted to him, but the wife of one of the under-servants having complained that the steward had offered her an affront, the consul had severely reprimanded him anil forbidden him to speak to the woman again on pain of dismissal. The next morning my friend, who was an exceedingly early riser, left iiis couch at the first rays of dawn, and went as usual to the marble tank in a recess from his bedroom, where he always began his toilet with a shower bath. He was on the point of stepping into the tank, when his attention was attracted by something glittering in the half-darkness. He stepped back and drew the lattice, admitting the full light of the morning. There, in the marble basin, where in another moment he*'would have placed his bare foot, lay coiled up an Echys, with head erect, prepared to spring, He summoned the steward, but he was nowhere to be found, and he was never heard of again. The other servants killed the snake, which had undoubtedly been placed there by the steward from a motive of revenge. In parts of South America, notably in the little known country at the sources of the Amazon, the natives have a preparation called wourali or worari, which is one of the most deadly poisons known. They use it for poisoning the tips of the tiny darts which they propel from a blow-pine with the mouth, to kill birds or even small animals, and the effect is generally fatal. The bird, orbeast or man—for the natives, though not a ferocious people, sometimes employ wourali for killing one another —becomes almost immediately paralysed, or overcome with drowsiness, the slightest prick of a jaiisoned dart being sufficient to produce these symptoms, and either dies with great muscular contortion or else is killed by some other weapon as soon as reduced to helplessness by the poison.

WHAT IS IT I Scientific men are at a loss to discover the secret of wourali. They cannot even agree as to whether it is an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral poison. The celebrated English naturalist, Frank Buckland, took a deep interest in this question, and after many laborious and very perilous ex|>eriments, came to the conclusion that the main ingredient of wourali was snake poison, but there were other ingredients, intensifying or preserving the snake poison, the nature of which he eould not determine. Sir Robert Schomburg, a tierman savant of very high standing, made a special journey to the Amazon country to investigate the origin of wourali. After infinite pains and adventures he ascertained that all the wourali that is made conies from a very limited area, where it is prepared with the most impenetrable mystery by a priestly caste amongst a particular tribe of natives, who sell it for an exorbitant price to other tribes. He spent months in the endeavour to get into the confidence of these subtle chemists, who were powerfully impressed by his own acquaintance with the secrets of nature, but all in vain. They eould neither be outwitted nor cajoled. Schomburg, however, obtained from them a quantity of the poison perfectly fresh, and found it was extraordinarily deadly in that state. After careful analysis and innumerable experiments he satisfied himself that it was a purely vegetable poison, an extract from the beans or seeds of a t ropical plant, stryehnos toxifera, of which he obtained specimens, mingled with some inert medium for convenience of transport. This theory, however, has been seriously shaken, if not actually demolished, by its being shown that wourali is entirely an external poison. That is to say, it operates solely by' being introduced into the blood from outside, and has no effect if taken into the system through the stomach. Birds and animals which are killed by darts poisoned with wourali are peifectly wholesome to eat, and the Amazon natives get all their food that way. Stryehnos toxifera, which is neither more nor less than strychnine, on the contrary, is entirely an internal poison. It is not at all injurious if introduced into the blood from outside, but if taken into the stomach it produces muscular paralysis and death in a few seconds.” Thus the secret of wourali remains undiscovered. DEADLIEST OF ALL. I come now to the deadliest poison of all, taking into account its durability, or rather indestructibility, as well as its fatal effect. Every human being carries about a great quantity of the material for making this poison without knowing it; and it is often made and applied with deadly results, quite unconsciously. It consists of the fluids of the human body, which under certain morbid conditions, produce the most virulent poison known. The rightful disease called blood poisoning is caused by some particle of this substance getting into the healthy blood and curdling or inflaming it so that it no longer serves its vital purpose. Many a doctor has lost his life by the mere crick of a needle which he had wetted with this poison in sewing up a wound. Now, how the savages of the Pacific Islands came to know of the existence of this natural poison, if I may call it so, cannot be explained ; for they have not even the rudiments of medical science. But that they have been only too familiar with it from time immemorial, is certain. It is a curious fact that the farther you go from the equator the less dangerous the savages are ; while the nearer you approach the equator, the more you need be on your guard against barbarous practices which seem not only inhuman but antihuman. The use of poisoned weapons is almost entirely confined to the inhabitants of those exquisitely beautiful groups of islands which lay under the equator or within a few degrees to north or southofit. These people, such as the Solomon Islanders or the Santa Cruz Islanders, someof whom are among the finest physical specimens of mankind, are the most horrible savages on earth. They spend their whole life in bloodshed, and are not only cannibals but addicted to the use of poison as the main, if not the only, weapon of war. They have spears and arrows pointed ami barbed with sharp bone or wood hardened in the lire, and everyone of these is poisoned, so that the least graze, scarcely enough to draw blood, is fatal. Commodore Goodenough, commanding the British squadron in those seas, died in indescribable torment from a wound so slight that it was not believed at first, he had been touched at all: and more deaths have occurred among sailors and traders from this cause than from any other. A bundle of arrows from the Solomon Islands was sent to England many years ago, and deposited with other curiosities in a museum in Colchester. A gentleman, visiting the museum, foolishly handled these weapons ami, feeling the point of one of the arrows, inflicted a prick like that of a pin. He died of it, in raving agony, three days afterwards. The symptoms are invariably those of tetanus, or lockjaw, a malady for which no remedy has ever been discovered. HOW DID THEY DISCOVER IT? Where do these savages get their atrocious poison and what does it consist of ? They get it from their own flesh and blood, and it consists of nothing but the fluids of the human l»ody. When they want a supply of poisoned weapons, they take a number of corpses after a battle, or kill a number of prisoners expressly, and, having left the bodies to putrefy in the bumingequatorial sun for some days, they stick them full of spear and arrow heads, which they leave there for weeks or months, or until the Ixxlies are entirely dried up. That is the whole process. When those spears "and arrows are drawn out, they are imperishably steeped in poison as deadly as that of Echys carinata or wourali—a poison which is absolutely destructive of the life of the creature whose blood it touches. The possession of the secret of poisoning by means of putrefied animal fluids by the most degraded of the human family is all the more remarkable, because the most advanced men of science have only recently discovered the explanation of the phenomena produced by that poison. The putrefaction of the animal fluids itself brings into existence a multitude of miscroscopie living organisms, germs or microbes, as they are now called; ami it is the introduction and infinite multiplication of these in the healthy bioml that produces paralysis ami death. I have seen a man -of-warsman, a magnificent specimen of vigorous, redundant manhood, wounded so slightly by a poisoned arrow that he himself laughed at it, and scarcely any abrasion was visible, yet reduced before sundown to utter helplessness and consigned to thedeepby his horror-stricken shipmates before another day had passed.