In the amusing Recollections of a Service in Colombia, there
is rather an extreme instance of credulity. The writer gives this account of the famous South American poison:
" This poison, which is most deadly, is thus extracted from a large kind of frog that abounds in the lowlands of New Grenada, though in Venezuela it is so scarce as to be seldom seen. A small stake, pointed at one end, is pushed. into the mouth of the poor harmless reptile, forced completely through the body, and as far as it can be made to go through one of its legs. A profuse perspiration of a white frothy substance is excited by the intense agony thus caused, which being carefully scraped. off, and preserved, is sold at a dear rate by the collectors."—Vol.
p. 170.
The Indians amused the traveller. The poison is known to be a vegetable poison extracted from a creeping plant ; and the various ingredients, serpents' teeth or frogs' perspiration, which the natives add in the preparation, are only thrown in for the sake of the mystification of a charm. An Evening Paper of the highest character having copied the recipe we have quoted, gravely observed, that such modes of making poison are not unknown ; and subjoined a recipe for procuring one by hanging a man up by the heels and collecting the saliva which falls front him in his tortures. The Globe's froth of suffering, Shakspeare's " sweat from the murderer's gibbet," and the Colombian officer's perspiration of impaled frogs, are doubtless all of equal venefic efficacy.
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