Dr Tschudi on Coca. 307 



that the supplicator for divine grace should approach the 

 priests with an acullico in his mouth. It was believed, that 

 any business undertaken without the benediction of coca 

 leaves, could not prosper ; and to the shrub itself worship 

 was rendered. During an interval of more than three hun- 

 dred years, Christianity has not been able to subdue the deep- 

 rooted idolatry ; for everywhere we find traces of belief in 

 the mysterious powers of this plant. The excavators in the 

 mines of Cerrode Pasco throw masticated coca on hard veins 

 of metal, in the belief that it softens the ore, and renders it 

 more easy to work. The origin of this custom is easily ex- 

 plained, when it is recollected that, in the time of the Incas, 

 it was believed that the Coyas, or the deities of metals, ren- 

 dered the mountains impenetrable, if they were not propitiated 

 by the odour of coca. The Indians, even at the present time, 

 put coca leaves into the mouths of dead persons, to secure to 

 them a favourable reception on their entrance into another 

 world ; and when a Peruvian Indian on a journey falls in 

 with a mummy, he, with timid reverence, presents to it some 

 coca leaves as his pious offering. 



Soon after the conquest of Peru, when the Spaniards treated 

 the Indians and all their customs with contempt, coca be- 

 came an object of aversion to the Whites. The reverence 

 rendered by the natives to the coca plant, induced the Spaniards 

 to believe that it possessed some demoniacal influence. The 

 officers of the government and the clergy, therefore, endea- 

 voured, by all possible means, to extirpate its use ; and this 

 is one cause, hitherto overlooked, of the hatred with which 

 the Indians regarded the Spaniards. In the second cauncil 

 lield at Lima, in 1567, coca was described " as a worthless 

 object, fitted for the misuse and superstition of the Indians ;** 

 and a royal decree of October 18, 1569, expressly declares 

 that the notions entertained by the natives that coca gives 

 them strength, is an ** illusion of the devil " (una elusion dtl 

 demonio). The Peruvian mine owners weie the first to dis- 

 cover the importance of the chacchar in assisting the Indians 

 to go through their excessive labour ; and they, together 

 with the plantation owners, became the most earnest defen- 



