4o6 Voyage of the Novara. 



among the Aymara Indians.* As the Government of Bolivia 

 draws a very handsome revenue from coca cultivation, a tax 

 of five reals, about one shilling, being levied on every cesto^ 

 or about 25 lbs. English, there is a better opportunity of get- 

 ting at the correct amount of the entire production than in 

 Peru, vrhere the plant is grown free of duty. The coca tax 

 realizes in all in Bolivia 300,000 pesos or dollars (about 

 £75,000), so that the entire annual product is about 480,000 

 cestos or 1,200,000 lbs. The cesto is worth at La Paz from 

 7 to 9 pesos, but when employed in large quantities for ex- 

 port, it cost about 10 dollars, placed on board ship. Alto- 

 gether the coca crop of Bolivia may reasonably be estimated 

 at rather less than 700,000 cestos, equal to about 78,000 tons. 

 The analysis to which the coca leaves I brought home 

 with me were subjected at Gottingen, was attended by most 

 important results, though the experiments are far from be- 

 ing completed. It was reserved for one of the assistants of 

 the chemical laboratory, named Albert Niemann, to discover 



* The Aymara Indian rarely uses animal food, as to do so he would require to kill 

 one of his beloved Llamas. His chief food consists of roasted Chuno, a small bitter 

 species of potato, which flourishes only on the barren, rugged plateau of the Andes in- 

 habited by the Aymara, where neither the common potato nor the maize continue to 

 grow ; even barley, which the Spaniards introduced, ceases to thrive. Their only 

 other food is a species of moss, which grows in the swamps, and is called by the na- 

 tives " Lanta." Under such alimentary conditions, it is readily intelligible why 

 the Aymara have a predilection for coca balls {acuUica), which (as sailors and others 

 do with us, with tobacco) they keep continually rolling about in their mouths, and 

 which, as soon as the whole of the juice has been sucked out, is thrown away and 

 replaced by a fresh " quid." The juice of the green leaves diluted with oceans of 

 saliva is usually swallowed. An Indian chews on the average an ounce to an ounce 

 and a half per diem, but on feast-days double that quantity. 



