206 PROVINCE OF CARAVAYA. Chap. XT I. 



Perichola, interceded for them, and eventually nothing was 

 done. The other town of San Juan del Oro had been aban- 

 doned some time before ; and the very sites where they stood 

 are now uncertain. 



In the great rebellion of Tupac Amaru the caciques and 

 people of Caravaya took part with the Indians, probably 

 owing to the influence possessed by the Inca, arising from 

 the large coca estate which belonged to him near San 

 Gavan.^ At the independence Caravaya became a part of 

 the Peruvian department of Puno. 



In 1846 Don Pablo Pimentel was appointed Sub-prefect 

 of Caravaya, and he endeavoured, by giving a glowing 

 account of its vast capabilities, to induce the government to 

 make roads and develop the resources of this important 

 province. Shortly afterwards, in 1849, Caravaya attracted 

 notice as a land rich in the precious metal, and it soon 

 became the California of South America. In July of that 

 year two brothers named Poblete, in searching for chinchona- 

 bark, discovered gi-eat abundance of gold-dust in the sands 

 of one of the Caravaya rivers, and the news soon spread far 

 and wide. Up to 1852 crowds of adventurers, among whom 

 were many Frenchmen, continued to follow in the footsteps 

 of the Pobletes, but most of them returned empty, and the 

 excitement has now died away. The trade in chinchona-bark 

 which once was remunerative, and in which many Peruvians 

 displayed extraordinary energy and endurance of fatigue, 

 ceased to exist in 1847, owing to the habit of adulterating the 

 Calisaya bark with inferior kinds, which gave the Caravaya 

 article a bad name in the market, and at length rendered 

 it unsaleable. This adulteration was practised either through 

 fraud or ignorance. If the former, it was certainly very short- 



* This appears from the Informe of i in Caravaya, shall be granted to IMari- 

 Diego Tupac A mam, dated Azangaro, j ano Tupac Amam as his rightful pos- 

 Oct. 18, 1781 ; in which he stipulates t session, because it belonged to his 

 that the coca estfite near San Gavan, ' father the Inca. 



