Lippincotts Magazine, February 1873 | Page 2

the column, redoubled their mazes. The careless air of
these Bolivian retrievers, their voluntary doublings through the most
difficult jungles, and their easy way of walking over everything with
their noses in the air, proved well their indifference to the obstacles
which were almost insurmountable to the rest.
[Illustration: THE CONES OF PATABAMBA.]
Nothing could be more singular and interesting than to see them
consulting one by one the indications scattered around them, and
deciding on their probabilities or promises. Where the height and
thickness of the foliage prevented them from seeing the sky, or even the
shade of the surrounding green, they walked bent toward the ground,
stirring up the rubbish, and choosing among the dead foliage certain
leaves, of which they carefully examined the two sides and the stem.
When by accident they found themselves near enough to speak to each
other--a rare chance, for each peon undertook a separate line of
search--they asked their friends, showing the leaves they had found,
whether their discoveries appertained to the neighboring trees or
whether the wind had brought the pieces from a distance. This kind of
investigation, pursued by men who had prowled through forests all
their lives, might seem slightly puerile if the reader does not understand
that it is often difficult, or even impossible, to recognize the growing
tree by its bark, covered as it is from base to branches with parasitic
vegetation of every sort. In those forests whatever has a stout stem is
used without scruple by the bignonias and air-plants, which race over
the trunk, plant their root-claws in the cracks, leap over the whole tree
at a single jet, or strangle it with multiplied knots, all the while
adorning it with a superb mantle of leaves and blossoms. This is a
difficulty which the most experienced cascarilleros are not able to
overcome. As an instance, the history is cited of a practico or
speculator who led an exploration for these trees in the valley of
Apolobamba. After having caused to be felled, barked, measured, dried
and trimmed all the cinchonas of one of those natural thickets called
_manchas_--an operation which had occupied four months--he was
about to abandon the spot and pursue the exploration elsewhere, when

accident led him to discover, in the enormous trunk buried in creepers
against which he had built his cabin, a _Cinchona nitida_, the
forefather of all the trees he had stripped.
In this kind of search the caravan pursued the borders of the river,
sometimes on this side and sometimes on that, now passing the
two-headed mountain Camanti, now sighting the tufted peak of Basiri,
now crossing the torrent called the Garote. In the latter, where the dam
and hydraulic works of an old Spanish gold-hunter were still visible in
a state of ruin, the sacred golden thirst of Colonel Perez once more
attacked him. Two or three pins' heads of the insane metal were
actually unearthed by the colonel and displayed in a pie-dish; but the
business of the party was one which made even the finding of gold
insignificant, and they pursued their way.
The flanks of these mountains, however, were really of importance to
the botanical motive of the expedition. Along the side of the Camanti,
where the yellow Garote leaked downward in a rocky ravine, the
Bolivians were again successful. They brought to Marcoy specimens of
half a dozen cinchonas, for him to sketch, analyze and decorate with
Latin names. The colors of two or three of these barks promised well,
but the pearl of the collection was a specimen of the genuine
_Calisaya_, with its silver-gray envelope and leaf ribbed with carmine.
This proud discovery was a boon for science and for commerce. It
threw a new light upon the geographical locality of the most precious
species of cinchona. It was incontestably the plant, and the Bolivians
appeared amazed rather than pleased to have discovered outside of their
own country a kind of bark proper only to Bolivia, and hardly known to
overpass the northern extremity of the valley of Apolobamba. This
discovery would rehabilitate, in the European market, the
quinine-plants of Lower Peru, heretofore considered as inferior to those
of Upper Peru and Bolivia. The latter country has for some time
secured the most favorable reputation for its barks--a reputation ably
sustained by the efforts of the company De la Paz, to whom the
government has long granted a monopoly. This reputation is based on
the abundance in that country of two species, the Cinchona calisaya
and _Boliviana,_ the best known and most valued in the market. But
for two valuable cinchonas possessed by Bolivia, Peru can show twenty,
many of them excellent in quality, and awaiting only the enterprise of

the government and the natural exhaustion of the forests to the south.
This