38 THE BARK-TRADE. Chap. II. 



These two companies lasted for two years, during which 

 time the Bolivian forests yielded 3,000,000 lbs. of bark. 

 Such was the result of the high prices which followed the 

 fall of the Pinto monopoly ; but it was the rich contractors, 

 and not the poor bark-collectors, who derived benefit from 

 the change.*' 



In 1851 Government prohibited the cutting of bark en- 

 tirely, from the 1st of January, 1852, to the 1st of January, 

 1854.'^ In 1858 a decree was issued to regulate the transition 

 of the system of monopoly to that of free-trade in bark, 

 which caused an improvement in the prices in European 

 markets ; and in November, 1859, Dr. Linares, then President 

 of Bolivia, declared the right to cut bark in the forests to 

 be free, and reduced the duty 25 per cent, on the current 

 prices, to be fixed at the beginning of each year.^ This is 

 the law which now regulates the bark trade in Bolivia, and, 

 after a com-se of short-sighted meddling legislation, extending 

 over twenty years, in 1850 it still brought 142,000 dollars 

 annually into the public treasury, being a fifteenth part of 

 the whole revenue of the Kepublic. 



For exportation the bark is wrapped in fresh bullock- 

 hides, having been previously sewn up in thick cotton bags 

 containing 155 lbs. each. These hide packages are called 

 serdhs, a mule-load being 285 lbs., and the transport to the 

 coast costing about ten dollars for each mule-load. 



It is to the persevering energy and great talent of that 

 distinguished French botanist Dr. Weddell that we owe our 

 knowledge of the chinchona regions of Bolivia and Southern 

 Peru, and especially of the inestimable quinine-yielding 

 species which he identified as the C. Calisaya. Dr. Weddell 

 accompanied the scientific expedition of the Count de Castel- 



" This account of the BoUvian bark ' Chap. xiii. p. 235. 

 trade is from Dr. Weddell's Voyage ' ' Gibbon's Valley of the Amazon, p. 

 dans le Nord de BoUvie, et dans les j 147. 

 partes voisines de P&ou. Paris, 1853. | ^ Mercurio del Vapor, Doc. 15, 1859. 



