USES AND ABUSES OF COCA— CINNAMON. 



571 



favor of the invisible powers was only to be obtained by a present of these highly 

 valued leaves. No work begun without coca could come to a happy termination, and 

 divine honors were paid to the shrub itself. 



After a period of more than three centuries, Christianity has not yet been able to 

 eradicate these deeply rooted superstitious feelings, and everywhere the traveler still 

 meets with traces of the ancient belief in its mysterious powers. To the present day, 

 the miners of Cerro de Pasco throw chewed coca against the hard veins of the ore, and 

 affirm that they can then be more easily worked, — a custom transmitted to them from 

 their forefathers, who were fully persuaded that the Coyas, or subterranean divinities, 

 rendered the mountains impenetrable unless previously propitiated by an oflPering of 

 coca. Even now the Indians put coca into the mouths of their dead, to insure them a 

 welcome on their passage to another world; and whenever they find one of their 

 ancestral mummies, they never fail to offer it some of the leaves. 



During the first period after the conquest of Peru, the Spaniards endeavored to 

 extirpate by all possible means the use of coca, from its being so closely interwoven 

 with the Indian superstitions ; but the proprietors of the mines soon became aware 

 how necessary it was for the successful prosecution of their undertakings; the planters 

 also found after a time that the Indians would not work without it. Private interest 

 prevailed, as it always does in the long run, over religious zeal and despotic interdic- 

 tions, and in the last century we even find a Jesuit, Don Antonio Julian, regretting 

 that the use of coca had not been introduced into Europe instead of tea or coffee. 

 When we consider its remarkable properties, it is indeed astonishing that it has so 

 long remained unnoticed. Were it concealed in the interior of Africa, or extremely 

 difficult to procure, this neglect could be more easily accounted for ; but hundreds of 

 vessels annually frequent the harbors of Peru and Bolivia, where it may be obtained 

 in large quantities, and yet it has only been rarely and in small quantities imported 

 into Europe, and, as far as I can learn, never into the United States. 



Although the Cinnamon tree, that beautiful laurel, whose bark furnishes the most 

 exquisite of all the spices of the East, is indigenous in the forests of Ceylon ; yet as no 

 author previous to the fourteenth century mentions its aromatic rind among the pro- 

 ductions of the island, there is every reason to believe that the cinnamon, which in 

 the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained first from 

 Africa, and afterwards from India. Cinnamon figures largely among the ingredients 

 used by the Hebrews for the holy anointing oil and sacred perfumes. Some, indeed, 

 but with no good reason, have supposed that the substance so designated was the 

 gum of a species of the aloe, and aver that cinnamon itself was unknown to the 

 Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. That the Portuguese, who had been mainly attracted 

 to the East by the fame of its spices, were nearly twenty years in India before they 

 took steps to obtain a footing at Colombo, proves that there can have been nothing 

 very remarkable in the quality of the spice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 

 and that the high reputation of the Ceylon cinnamon is comparatively modern, and 

 attributable to the attention bestowed upon its preparation for market by the Portu- 

 guese, and afterwards on its cultivation by the Dutch. Long after the appearance of 

 Europeans in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found in the forests of the interior, where it 

 was cut and brought away by the Ghalias, an emigrant tribe, which, in consideration 



