Spain; it is smooth, white, with some murrey veins; the 
Indians eat it, and it is believed that it is more whole- 
some than ours, and not so cool.’’ Sancho Paz Ponce 
de Leon in his report on Otavalo (1582) claimed that 
there was the Spanish cucumber and also one ‘‘from 
these parts’’ in the vicinity of Pizque, along the Guail- 
labamba River, just as in other places near the Mira or 
Coangue River (J. de la Espada, 1897, III, 2038, 73, 
113). Even at the present time, it is the daily custom to 
sell excellent pepinos to the passengers stopping for a 
while at the village El Olivar to the north of the city of 
Ibarra, Imbabura Province, on the road between Quito 
and 'Tulean and Pasto. In the second quarter of the 17th 
Century, Vazquez de Espinosa, listing the productions 
of Quito, stated that there are ‘‘cucumbers very different 
and better than ours’’ (Vazquez de Espinosa, 1942, 868; 
Vazquez de Espinosa, 1948, 840). 
We do not have such early reports for New Grenada. 
We cannot know whether or not the growing of this 
species, carried on now as far north as Popayan and even 
in Antioquia and on the Bogota plateau, dates from pre- 
hispanic times or only since the Conquest. But if the 
cachon were cultivated in the upper Mira River basin, 
the southernmost boundary of expansion of the Pastos 
group, it may be assumed that the cultivation of Sola- 
num muricatum had spread northward at least as far as 
the basin of the river called now Guaitara. Fr. Alonso 
de Zamora said that at the end of the 17th Century there 
was in the New Kingdom of Grenada, an abundance of 
‘‘nepinos’’ of several kinds, including the sweet one 
(Zamora, 1701, 45; Zamora, 1980, 43). 
In 1590, Acosta reported: ‘‘Neither are the so-called 
pepinos [Solanum muricatum] trees, but vegetables that 
are annual in habit. This name was given to them be- 
cause some of them, even most of them, are long and 
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