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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
and who soon returned with a plant that had a straight stem, 
twelve or fifteen inches high, bearing a few leaves and fur- 
nished with short, tender, thread-like radicles, and that grew 
in a rich and well watered soil. At the sight of this herb, so 
entirely different in appearance from that described by Ve- 
lasco, as well as from that which Puche had shown him, he 
felt quite disconcerted. Nevertheless he dried the plant in 
the shade, and then had the roots and leaves reduced to pow- 
der that he might try it on himself. He accordingly took the 
same dose that Puche began with; but, as it produced no ef- 
fect, he next took a dose of the powdered roots only, and this 
had no more effect than the former. Being now convinced 
that this herb was inert, not only by his own trials, but by 
those which he was informed that several persons had made 
in vain, in whom the Mai de San Lazaro had made great pro- 
gress, and giving up all hope of obtaining the true plant 
through the agency of any of the Indians in that quarter, 
whose good faith he then suspected, he went to explore in 
person the mountains around Cuenca, and examined with great 
attention the most retired and least accessible spots of the de- 
serts of Pasul, Izincocha, Mibir, and Soldados, where the wan- 
derer is forced to stop and admire the strange and sublime 
effects of nature that he finds at every step; but, after eight 
days of fatiguing excursions, having met with no plant which 
bore the slightest resemblance to that he was seeking, he re- 
turned to Cuenca, taking a different direction from his former 
one, over a mountain of extraordinary height and abounding 
in grand and romantic scenery, but in deep affliction at the 
total failure of his enterprise. So much of enthusiastic zeal 
and perseverance, however, were not left wholly unrewarded; 
for in about a week after that fruitless expedition, he had the 
satisfaction of learning that the Post-Master-General of the 
district, who resided in Cuenca, had recently given a medi- 
cine called Cuichunchulli with great benefit to a son and 
daughter of his who had been suffering severely from leprosy 
for five or six years. Upon this he immediately waited upon 
that gentleman, and received from him the following detail of 
