Scientific Intelligence — Anthropology. 383 



which seems incurable. The Indians of America, especially 

 those of the Peruvian Andes, notwithstanding the civilization 

 which surrounds them, have a vague sense of their own in- 

 curable deficiency, and hence they are eager to relieve themselves, 

 by violent excitements, from such melancholy feelings. This 

 accounts not only for the use of the coca, but also for the bound- 

 less love of spirituous liquors, which possesses scarcely any other 

 people in the world in an equal degree. To the Peruvian, the 

 coca is the source of the highest gratification ; for under its in- 

 fluence his usual melancholy leaves him, and his dull imagina- 

 tion presents him with images which he never enjoys in his 

 usual state of mind. If it cannot entirely produce the terrible 

 feeling of over-excitement that opium does, yet it reduces the 

 person who uses it to a similar state, which is doubly dangerous, 

 because, though less in degree, it is of a far longer duration. 

 This effect is not perceived until after continued observation ; for 

 a new comer is surprised indeed at the many disorders to which 

 the men of many classes of the people are subject in Peru, but 

 is very far from ascribing them to the coca. A look at a deter- 

 mined coquero gives the solution of the phenomenon ; unfit for 

 all the serious concerns of life, such a one is a slave to his pas- 

 sion, even more than the drunkard, and exposes himself to far 

 greater dangers to gratify his propensity. As the magic power 

 of the herb cannot be entirely felt, till the usual concerns of 

 daily life, or the interruptions of social intercourse, cease to em- 

 ploy the mental powers, the genuine coquero retires into solitary 

 darkness or the wilderness, as soon as his longing for this intoxi- 

 cation becomes irresistible. When night, which is doubly aw- 

 ful in the gloomy forest, covers the earth, he remains stretched 

 out under the tree which he has chosen ; without the protection 

 of a fire near him, he listens with indifference to the growling 

 of the ounce ; and when, amid peals of thunder, the clouds pour 

 down torrents of rain, or the fury of the hurricane uproots the 

 oldest trees, he regards it not. In two days he generally returns, 

 pale, trembling, his eyes sunk, a fearful picture of unnatural in- 

 dulgence. He who has once been seized with this passion, and is 

 placed in a situation that favours its development, is a lost man. 

 Dr Poeppig heard in Peru truly deplorable accounts of young 

 men of good families^ who, in an accidental visit to the woods, 



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