166 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
Monardes had published his series of monographs on the economic 
contribution made by the newly discovered Americas to the Old World. 
The lost MS. of Cornejo might supply the information as to the origin 
of the commercial use of the ‘herb.’ But the inference is, on the 
evidence, that the leaf was not in general use by the natives prior to the 
establishment of the Jesuit missions, except, perhaps, for chewing. 
The native name of the dried leaf gives little help. In the Guarani 
dialect the principal varieties were known as Caamini and Caaguazu 
(in Brazil, Congonha). 
The tree itself was known as Caa, which simply means a tree, a generic 
term, and it is easy to produce parallels from other native dialects that 
no plant of importance is mentioned except by a specific name. The 
implication is that, as far as the natives were concerned, the ilex was 
merely a tree. 
It has been suggested that the word Caa bears some relation to the 
Chinese C’ha, meaning tea in the Pekinese, Mandarin and Cantonese 
dialects. ‘Tea was first brought to Europe by the Dutch in the early 
seventeenth century from Bantam, whither it had been imported by 
Chinese merchants from Amoy, where it was called Té. The Portuguese 
found it in Macao, under the name C’ha, a little later. The first mention 
of tea in Western literature is in Maffei’s Historica Indica, published in 
1558. It is not inconceivable that the Jesuits of the period, looking for 
a substitute for tea, by then introduced into southern Europe, also 
introduced the Chinese word, which was mis-pronounced by the natives. 
The subsequent development of the Yerbales, or ilex plantations, is 
a matter of history. ‘The economic importance of the leaf, combined 
with the fact that it grew in the less accessible regions (swampy mountain 
valleys), soon led to the inception of attempts to bring it under cultivation. 
Rodero gives the account of the first attempt. 
Young trees were brought from Maracayu to the mission communities 
along the Parana river, but did not flourish. Experiments in raising 
seedlings were also a failure. The eventual success is recorded by 
Dobrizhoffer (1749), who reports that the seed of the ilex is covered with 
a thick coating of gluten which prevents germination. In the wild state, 
this gluten is removed by passage through the bodies of certain birds, 
principally the South American pheasant (Jacu). This gluten was 
eventually removed by careful washing and the seed sown deep in ground 
drenched with water. The young seedlings were planted out in deep 
trenches under thatched shelters. Yet, even after these precautions, the 
cultivated plants never attained the size of those growing under natural 
conditions. However, the Handbook of Paraguay (1894) states that the 
Jesuit attempts were so successful that at Santiago (Paraguay) there once 
existed a grove of 20,000 trees. On the expulsion of the Jesuits these 
plantations disappeared, and only in recent years have successful yerbales 
been established in the Misiones territory of North-eastern Argentina. 
The ilex tree remained without any name assigned by international 
botanists until the nineteenth century ; and it was by a curious piece of 
bad luck that the famous French botanist, Dr. Bonpland, was prevented 
from having the honour of classifying yerba maté. Bonpland went, in 
