58 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
pasos in the rapids of the Huallaga, two days' 
journey below Lamas. It was not there, however, 
that he assassinated his patron, Ursua, but on the 
Amazon itself, at some place not well made out, on 
New Year's Day, 1561. 
Ursua has not been the only adventurer whose 
miscarriage dated from Lamas. When I embarked 
at Liverpool, in June 1849, for the mouth of the 
Amazon, I was shown by the Messrs. Singlehurst 
great piles of a spurious Peruvian Bark, which had 
been found to contain no particle of quinine or of 
any cognate alkaloid, and was therefore quite un- 
saleable. Its history, as I made it out many years 
afterwards, was as follows : — A certain Don Luis 
, a young Peruvian, of good address and figure, 
energetic but restless, and sadly deficient in know- 
ledge and prudence, whilst occupied as intendant 
of a mine near Cajamarca, had heard reports of the 
abundance of bark-trees in the lower part of the 
valley of the Huallaga, and having obtained speci- 
mens of the leaves and bark, he rashly pronounced 
them identical with true Cascarilla, such as he 
had seen at Huanuco. Forthwith he persuaded 
several other young men — some of them of good 
family — to join him in an expedition in quest of it. 
They found it in greatest abundance on the hill of 
Lamas, where they collected what they considered 
would make a shipload of it, embarked it on the 
Huallaga in rafts, and thus conveyed it all the way 
down the Amazon — some 2000 miles — to the port 
of Para. In all the towns on their route their bold 
venture created a great sensation. At the city of 
Barra (now Manaos), at the mouth of the Rio 
Negro, they delayed long enough for Don Luis to 
