REVIEWS. 
35 
coca soon reduces it to naked brushwood, and it is but slowly that it regains its 
verdant garb. These leaves, which are gathered and dried with great care, form 
the object of a brisk trade, and the use of them is as ancient as our first knowledge 
of Peruvian history; for the rude primitive people received the coca from the 
Cadmus of the lofty mountains of Titicaca, and wherever the incas afterwards pene- 
trated, they distributed it as a boon among the conquered nations. To the present 
day, we see the Indian, stretched out unsociably in the shade, alternately putting 
some coca-leaves and some finely powdered chalk into his mouth. Silently, as 
wnwilling to be disturbed by conversation, he whiles away a good half hour in the 
enjoyment of this occupation, slowly swallowing the saliva, and renewing the 
masticated leaves by fresh ones ; and, while thus engaged, not all the haste and 
impatience of the traveller, nor even the approach of a heavy storm, can rouse the 
Indian from this state of intolerable apathy. The servant would instantly quit any 
white master who attempted to restrain him in this respect, and would sooner bear 
to be deprived of necessary food, than to employ in any other manner the period 
allotted to the enjoyment of his coca. Only in quiet retirement, too, is the pleasure 
unalloyed, it is lost by riding or walking : so that if the traveller would keep his 
companion in good humour, whether proceeding by boat or by mules, he must four 
times a day, consent to these tantalising pauses, a sacrifice which even the farmers 
of this country are compelled to make to the infatuation of their workmen. It has 
never answered to debar a coquero (thus is the most intimate companion termed in 
Peru) from the enjoyment of this vice, for every one declares he would sooner 
forego the most necessary things, and the appetite for it increases with age, bringing 
with it many evil consequences. Strangers are amazed at beholding such an in- 
fatuated passion for a leaf, which, whether fresh or dry, is only distinguished by a 
slight scent ; possesses no balsamic properties, and when taken in small quantities 
has merely a grassy, or at most, a bitterish taste; the difficulty, however, vanishes 
when the observation of its effect upon others, or one's own personal experience, 
convinces us that, the coca, by its property of stimulating the nervous system, pos- 
sesses a power much akin to that of opium. Rude nations have ever sought for 
artificial excitements, and the lower a people stand in the scale of intellectual 
ability, so much the more attractive to them is that means of exhilaration which 
removes for a time the consciousness of a dreary waste within. The American 
Indians, and especially those of the Peruvian Andes, though surrounded by civilisa- 
tion, are enthralled by a melancholy suspicion of their own deficiencies and inability 
to improve themselves, whence arises their passion for artificial stimula, whether 
supplied by the coca or by the immoderate use of ardent spirits. Under the effect 
of the former, the habitual dejection of the Peruvian leaves him, and his indolent 
imagination brings images to his mind, which would never occur to him in his usual 
condition. If less violent in its first effects than opium, the coca is, perhaps, more 
dangerous from their longer continuance. A series of observations can alone 
convince the novice of this fact, as without it, the long train of ills which attack 
the Peruvian would never be traced to their real source. The sight of an inveterate 
