346 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



to be an efFe6lual substitute for sealing-wax, is apparently calcu- 

 lated for many uses. A kind, of ozier or willow, which grows 

 in this territory, is deemed by the Indians a specific in com- 

 plaints of the bowels, and is named by them calenture^ because, 

 in employing its decodlion in cases of the most violent rheu- 

 matic afFe6lions, the patient is subje6led for three or four hours 

 to a violent fever, which, terminating in a copious perspira- 

 tion, leaves him free from every ailment. The few trials of 

 this remedy which have been made, have been extremely suc- 

 cessful against siphylis ; and if the pra6tical inquiries that 

 have been recently instituted should correspond with them, 

 cures may be efFe6led by the means of one of the most sur- 

 prizing simples for which medicine is indebted to the Ameri- 

 can continent. The produdlion of a worm, which the In- 

 dians name sustillo, and by which a paper, very similar to 

 that made in China, is fabricated, has been hitherto unknown 

 to all the naturalists*. Lastly, Bezares discovered that which 



has 



* Even tlie great R.eaumur included, there is not one of them who makes men- 

 tion, either of this caterpillar, or of its produdlion. Father Calancha alone, in his 

 Augustlnian History of Peru (hb. i. p. 66), gives an account of it, and observes, 

 that it is peculiar to the valley of Pampateco, now Pampantico, in the vicinity of 

 the Panatuas, now Panataguas, at a small distance from Huanuco, and ten days' 

 journey from Lima, where the Jesuits built the town of Ascension. This is pro- 

 perly the site discovered by Bezares. Calancha adds, that he had in his possession a 

 leaf of this paper, inscribed by father Alonso Gomez, and addressed to father Lucas 

 Salazar, who was assured by his correspondent, that it was cut from a piece a yard 

 and a quarter in length, and that there were other pieces which measured a yard and 

 three-quarters, Sec. Next follow the details relative to the mode the worm pursues 

 in weaving the paper. The loss of the towns above referred to, and the scarcity of 

 Calancha's work, buried in oblivion the discovery and remembrance of tin's pheno- 

 menon, 



