414 PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 



the Great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the Quina- woods 

 in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu. 



The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth 

 or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from a vigor- 

 ous root-shoot, or from a seed : we heard with astonishment that, at 

 the period of my journey, according to official computations, the 

 collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina 

 Hunters) only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the 

 Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found 

 its way at that time into commerce ; the whole was sent from the 

 port of Payta on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use 

 of the Spanish court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 

 11,000 Spanish pounds, eight or nine hundred trees were cut down 

 every year. The older and thicker stems have become more and 

 more scarce; but the luxuriance of vegetation is such that the 

 younger trees, which are now resorted to, though only 6 inches in 

 diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English feet in height. This 

 beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves above 5 English inches 

 long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems always to aspire to 

 rise above its neighbors. As its upper branches wave to and fro in 

 the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and pecu- 

 liar effect recognizable from a great distance. The mean tempera- 

 ture in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found, ranges 

 between 12 and 15 Keaumur (60.2 and 65.8 Fahrenheit), 

 which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the 

 Island of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at 

 these two stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. 

 Comparisons between the climates of places, one of which is situated 

 in an elevated tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of 

 latitude, can be from their nature but little satisfactory. 



In order to descend south-south-east from the mountain knot of 

 Loxa to the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass 

 over the Paramos of Chulucanas, Gruamani, and Yamoca mountain 

 wildernesses of a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, 

 and to which, in the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna 

 (a word belonging to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly 

 rise above 9500 (10,125 English) feet; they are stormy, often en^. 



