242 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
food for cattle, and were there made fast for the 
night. Here we slept tranquilly, save that we 
were occasionally aroused by the snuffing of bears 
around us ; and before daylight Bermeo and his 
companion were on foot, and making their way 
through the forest in quest of Cinchona trees. 
They returned at 7 o'clock, having found only 
a single tree standing, and from that one the bark 
had been stripped near the root, so that it was 
dead and leafless. We breakfasted, and then I 
accompanied them into the forest. We followed 
the track they had already opened, and then 
plunged deeper in, meeting every few minutes with 
prostrate naked trunks of the Cinchona, but with 
none standing. Bermeo several times climbed 
trees on the hill-sides, whence he could look over 
a large expanse of forest, but could nowhere get 
sight of the large red leaves of the Cinchona. At 
length we began to tire, and we decided on return- 
ing towards our hut, making a detour along a 
declivity which we had not yet explored. We 
went on still a long time with the same fortune, 
and were beginning to despair of seeing a living 
plant, when we came on a prostrate tree, from 
the root of which a slender shoot, 20 feet high, was 
growing. My satisfaction may well be conceived, 
and my first thought was to verify a report that 
had been made to me by every one who had 
collected Cascarilla, namely, that the trees had 
milky juice, which to me was strange and incredible 
in the Rubiaceae. Bermeo made a slit in the bark 
with the point of his cutlass, and I at once saw 
what was the real fact. The juice is actually 
colourless, but the instant it is exposed to the air 
