244 THE CIN< IIMNA WOODS. 



The travellers rested awhile al Loxa, and visited its 

 cinchona woods which yielded quinine, or Peruvian 

 bark. Peruvian bark was firsl brought into Europe in 

 the middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebas- 

 tian 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, who had been cured of inter- 

 mittent fever at Limn, accompanied by her physician, 

 Juan del Ve£o. The trees which yielded the finest 

 quality of quinine were found from eight to twelve miles 

 to the south-east of Loxa, in the mountains of Uritusinga, 

 Villonaco, and Riimisitana. They grew in dense woods, 

 and aspired above the surrounding trees. Their leaves 

 were five inches long and two broad, and of a peculiar 

 reddish color. When the upper branches waved to and 

 fro in the wind, their glittering could be seen at a great 

 distance. 



The quinine tree was cut down in its first flowering 

 season, or in the fourth or seventh year of its age, accord- 

 ing as it had sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from 

 a seed. Humboldt learned, that at the period of his 

 journey, according to official computations, only 11,000 

 lbs. of the bark were collected 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 eight or 

 nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older 

 and thicker stems were already becoming scarce; but 

 the luxuriance of vegetation was such that the younger 

 trees, which supplied the demand, though only six inches 

 in diameter, often attained the height of fifty or sixty feet. 



