4 THE COUNTESS OF CHINCHON. Chap. I. 



healing virtues of quinquina bark, and to have instructed 

 him in the proper way to administer it, and thus his cure 

 was effected. 



In 1638 the wife of Luis Geronimo Fernandez de Cabrera 

 Bobadilla y Mendoza, fourth Count of Chinchon, lay sick of 

 an intermittent fever m the palace at Lima. Her famous 

 cure mduced Linnaeus, long afterwards, to name the whole 

 genus of quinine-yielding trees in her honour cJmiehona. The 

 godmother of these priceless treasures of the vegetable king- 

 dom has, therefore, some claim upon our attention. 



This Countess of Cliinchon w^as a daughter of the noble 

 house of Osorio, whose founder was created Marquis of 

 Astorga by Henry IV., King of CastiUe. The eighth 

 marquis, who died at Astorga in 1613, had a daughter by his 

 wife Dona Blanca Manrique y Aragon, named Ana,^ born 

 in 1576 ; and the ruins of the palace in the curious old towii 

 of Astorga, in w^hich she passed her childhood, are stUl 

 standing.'^ At the early age of sixteen she was married to 

 Don Luis de Velasco, Marquis of Salinas, who was about to 

 assume the imj)ortant oflSce of viceroy of Mexico. She pro- 

 bably accompanied her husband to Mexico, and afterwards to 

 Lima, as he was viceroy of Peru from 1596 to 1604. In the 

 latter year he resumed his former office in Mexico, and, on 

 his retm-n to Spain, he became President of the Council of 

 the Indies from 1611 to 1617.*^ The lady Ana had thus been 

 a great traveller, when, in the latter year, she foimd herself 

 a widow. In 1621 she w^as married, in the city of Madrid, to 

 her second husband the fourth Count of Chinchon, who was 

 descended from a long line of proud and valiant Catalonian 

 ancestors. One of his forefathers, Don Andres de Cabrera, 



^ Tlie fii-st Marqius oi Astorga cousin to her contemporary King 



married Leonora, flaiighter of Don 

 Fadrique Henriquez, Admii-al of Spain, 

 and sister of tlio Queen of Aragon, 

 who was mother of King Ferdinand 



the Catholic : so tliat Ana was sixth ** Alcedo. 



Philip IV. 



' Nobiliario genealogico de los Titulos 

 de Esparat, par Alonzo Lopez de Haro, 

 IMadrid, 1(326. 



