58 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



pasos in the rapids of the Huallaga, two days' 

 journey below Lamas. It was not there, however, 

 that he assassinated his patron, Ursua, but on the 

 Amazon itself, at some place not well made out, on 

 New Year's Day, 1561. 



Ursua has not been the only adventurer whose 

 miscarriage dated from Lamas. When I embarked 

 at Liverpool, in June 1849, for the mouth of the 

 Amazon, I was shown by the Messrs. Singlehurst 

 great piles of a spurious Peruvian Bark, which had 

 been found to contain no particle of quinine or ol 

 any cognate alkaloid, and was therefore quite un- 

 saleable. Its history, as I made it out many years 

 afterwards, was as follows : A certain Don Luis 

 -, a young Peruvian, of good address and figure, 

 energetic but restless, and sadly deficient in know- 

 ledge and prudence, whilst occupied as intendant 

 of a mine near Cajamarca, had heard reports of the 

 abundance of bark-trees in the lower part of the 

 valley of the Huallaga, and having obtained speci- 

 mens of the leaves and bark, he rashly pronounced 

 them identical with true Cascarilla, such as he 

 had seen at Huanuco. Forthwith he persuaded 

 several other young men some of them of good 

 family to join him in an expedition in quest of it. 

 They found it in greatest abundance on the hill ot 

 Lamas, where they collected what they considered 

 would make a shipload of it, embarked it on the 

 Huallaga in rafts, and thus conveyed it all the way 

 down the Amazon some 2000 miles to the port 

 of Para. In all the towns on their route their bold 

 venture created a great sensation. At the city of 

 Barra (now Manaos), at the mouth of the Rio 

 Negro, they delayed long enough for Don Luis to 



