THE 



PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, 

 THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA. 



AFTER a residence of an entire year on the crest of the chain of 

 the Andes or Antis, (*) between 4 north and 4 south latitude, 

 in the high plains of New Granada, Pastes, and Quito, whose mean 

 elevations range between 8500 and 12,800 English feet, we rejoiced 

 in descending gradually through the milder climate of the Quina- 

 yielding forests of Loxa to the plains of the upper part of the course 

 of the Amazons, a terra incognita rich in magnificent vegetation. 

 The small town of Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious 

 of all the species of medicinal Fever Bark : Quina, or Cascarilla fina 

 de Loxa. It is the precious production of the tree which we have 

 described botanically as Cinchona condaminea, but which, under the 

 erroneous impression that all the kinds of the Quina or fever bark 

 of commerce were furnished by the same species of tree, had pre- 

 viously been called Cinchona officinalis. The Fever Bark was first 

 brought to Europe towards the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 either, as Sebastian Badus asserts, to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or 

 to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of the wife of the Viceroy, the 

 Countess of Chinchon, ( 2 ) who had been cured of intermittent fever 

 at Lima, accompanied by her physician, Juan del Vego. The trees 

 which yield the finest quality of Quina de Loxa are found from 8 to 

 12 miles to the south-east of the town, in the mountains of Uritu- 

 singa, Villon aco, and Rumisitana, growing on mica-slate and gneiss, 

 at very moderate elevations above the level of the sea, being between 

 5400 and 7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet, heights about equal 

 respectively to those of the Hospice on the Grimsel and the Pass of 



35* 



