454 Peruvian-baric Trees and their Transplantation. 



never trodden by the foot of the white man ; and if by any 

 chance they are lost, or their provisions fall short, death is 

 their inevitable doom. Dr. Weddell describes a poor fellow 

 who thns had ended his days, far away from home and friends. 

 His corpse was nearly naked, and covered with myriads of 

 insects, the stings of which had tormented his last moments. 

 Close by was a hastily-constructed hut, his clothes, his 

 knife, and an earthen pot, showing the remnants of the last 

 meal of a man in search of medicine which was to save the life 

 of others. 



The Indians, though at present the best cascarilleros, or 

 bark collectors, and intimately acquainted with the names and 

 commercial value of the different sorts, are supposed by some 

 to have been formerly ignorant of the great therapeutic qua- 

 lities of these drugs. They called the Loxa bark " Quina- 

 quina " (bark of barks) ; and Markham has well shown that 

 in the Quichua language, to which the term belongs, a 

 doubling of a name is an indication that the plant to 

 which it applies possesses, in the estimation of the Indians, 

 some medicinal virtue. Now, we know of no other use of the 

 Loxa bark except that derived from its febrifuge properties, 

 and in my mind there is little doubt that it was to this the 

 doubling of the name must be attributed. Those who have 

 had practical experience in gathering information about medi- 

 cinal plants from the lips of barbarous people, as I have had, 

 will not be surprised at the secresy with which the knowledge 

 of the use of Quinaquina was preserved. As a rule, the most 

 sovereign remedies are never revealed to a stranger, nor 

 known to the people at large, and no bribe will induce the 

 " medical profession" amongst the Indians to be otherwise 

 than reserved when questioned by Europeans. Madame de 

 Genlis, in her " Zuma," builds the plot of her charming little 

 story on a conspiracy of the Indians, the object of which was to 

 allow the climate to destroy their Spanish enemy by withholding 

 the knowledge of the bark when fever attacked them. I am 

 aware that this is not history, but I have always thought, con- 

 sidering the Indian character, and the strong desire of the 

 aboriginal population to get rid of their foreign oppressors, 

 that Madame de Genlis had here hit upon the true solution of 

 the question why so many years elapsed before Europeans 

 became acquainted with this bark of barks. 



It is not until the year 1630, that Don Juan Lopez de 

 Canizares, the Spanish Corregidor of Loxa, being ill of inter- 

 mittent fever, an Indian is said to have revealed to him the 

 virtues of the bark, and instructed him in the proper way of 

 administering it. About eight years later the wife of the fourth 

 Count of Chinchon, Yiceroy of Peru, was suffering from the 



