This Point Or Head Is Very Slightly Fastened By A Lashing
Of Bark To A Fusiform Piece Of Bone About
Four inches long, which
is in its turn lashed to a shaft about fourteen inches long, the
other end of
Which is sometimes equipped with a triple feather and
sometimes is not.
The poison is placed in the elongated cavity in the head in a very
soft state, and hardens afterwards. In some of the arrow-heads
fully half a teaspoonful of the paste is inserted. From the nature
of the very slight lashings which attach the arrow-head to the
shaft, it constantly remains fixed in the slight wound that it
makes, while the shaft falls off.
Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and
has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is
made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of
blue flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions. The
root is pounded into a pulp, mixed with a reddish earth like an
iron ore pulverised, and again with animal fat, before being placed
in the arrow. It has been said that the poison is prepared for use
by being buried in the earth, but Benri says that this is needless.
They claim for it that a single wound kills a bear in ten minutes,
but that the flesh is not rendered unfit for eating, though they
take the precaution of cutting away a considerable quantity of it
round the wound.
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