CHAPTER XIl 



T^'KVG^. -continued. 



Coca. Erythroxylon Coca. 



Habitat. Coca consists of the dried leaves of a shrub growing wild in 



the Cinchona regions of the South American Andes at eleva- 

 tions of from 2,000 to 9,000 feet above the level of the sea. 

 The plant is extensively cultivated in the warm mountain 

 valleys of the eastern slopes of the Andes, and the leaves are 

 universally chewed by the Indians — both men and women, 

 and by many of the other inhabitan.ts of New Granada, 

 Chewing the Bolivia, Peru, and the neighbouring countries. The chewing 

 of the leaves exerts a pleasureable effect on the mind, and 

 Remarkable undcr the influence of the drug the Indians are able to per- 

 dru° whU^^ form long and rapid journeys, and to carry heavy loads? 

 chewed. without sleep or food. In New Granada, coca is called 

 spadic, and Spruce states that an Indian with a chew of 

 Spadic in his cheek, will go two or three days without food, 

 Mr. ^ and without feeling any desire to sleep. Markham, whilst 

 experience! travelling in the Cinchona districts, says he chewed coca 

 very frequently, and besides the agreeable soothing feeling it 

 produced, he found that he could endure long abstinence from 

 food with less inconvenience than he would otherwise have 

 felt ; it enabled him also to ascend precipitous mountain 

 sides with a feeling of lightness and elasticity and without 

 Antiquity losing breath. The Indians sometimes chew the leaf alone, 

 custom. and sometimes mixed with small quantities of lime or of the 



