[14] Near Berberah, Where The Descents Are More Rapid, Such Panoramas Are Common.

[15] This is the celebrated Waba, which produces the Somali Wabayo, a poison applied to darts and arrows.

It is a round stiff evergreen, not unlike a bay, seldom taller than twenty feet, affecting hill sides and torrent banks, growing in clumps that look black by the side of the Acacias; thornless, with a laurel-coloured leaf, which cattle will not touch, unless forced by famine, pretty bunches of pinkish white flowers, and edible berries black and ripening to red. The bark is thin, the wood yellow, compact, exceedingly tough and hard, the root somewhat like liquorice; the latter is prepared by trituration and other processes, and the produce is a poison in substance and colour resembling pitch.

Travellers have erroneously supposed the arrow poison of Eastern Africa to be the sap of a Euphorbium. The following "observations accompanying a substance procured near Aden, and used by the Somalis to poison their arrows," by F. S. Arnott, Esq., M.D., will be read with interest.

"In February 1853, Dr. Arnott had forwarded to him a watery extract prepared from the root of a tree, described as 'Wabie,' a toxicodendron from the Somali country on the Habr Gerhajis range of the Goolies mountains. The tree grows to the height of twenty feet. The poison is obtained by boiling the root in water, until it attains the consistency of an inspissated juice. When cool the barb of the arrow is anointed with the juice, which, is regarded as a virulent poison, and it renders a wound tainted therewith incurable.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 226 of 479
Words from 60465 to 60735 of 128411