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Updated: June 24, 2025
Along the side of the Camanti, where the yellow Garote leaked downward in a rocky ravine, the Bolivians were again successful. They brought to Marcoy specimens of half a dozen cinchonas, for him to sketch, analyze and decorate with Latin names.
The cascarilleros of South America divide the species into a category of colors, according to the tinge of the bark: there are yellow, red, orange, violet, gray and white cinchonas. The yellow, among which figure the Cinchona calisaya, lancifolia, condaminea, micrantha, pubescens, etc., are placed in the first rank: the red, orange and gray are less esteemed.
Their road to the cinchonas led up the stream, on the same side with the house. After going a few hundred yards, they entered a grove of trees that had white trunks and leaves of a light silvery colour. The straight, slender stems of these trees, and the disposition of their branches, leaning over at the tops, gave them somewhat the appearance of palms.
This view is corroborated by the circumstance that the tropical cinchonas, if cultivated in our feebly lighted hothouses, yield scarcely any alkaloids. Prof. Vogel has proved this experimentally. He has examined the barks of cinchona plants obtained from different conservatories, but has not found in any of them the characteristic reaction of quinine.
Other products, and especially cinchona, have received a fair amount of attention in Coorg, and the land on the Ghauts to the westward, where, as we have seen, the coffee plantations have been abandoned, proved to be well suited for the production of the commoner kinds of bark, and large extents of abandoned or semi-abandoned lands were planted with cinchonas.
It was followed by many others, until one of the cinchonas lay along the sward. Then Guapo attacked another, as near the root as was convenient for chopping. Don Pablo's part of the work now began. Armed with a sharp knife, he made circular incisions round the trunk, at the distance of several feet from each other, and a single longitudinal one intersecting all the others.
It was hard to realize at once the gravity of the misfortune. No one was hurt, no one was insulted. But provisions, clothing, articles of exchange and weapons were all gone, except such arms and ammunition as the travelers carried on their persons. A collection of cinchonas was in possession of one of the Bolivians, though it represented but a fraction of the species discovered.
The success of the bark-hunters in their search for cinchonas had cheered all hearts, and the luxurious supper of dried mutton and chuno arranged for them on their return gave a reminiscence of splendor to the thatched hut on the banks of the stream. This edifice, the last of civilized construction they expected to see, had the effect of a home in the wilderness.
At length, all things being ready, Don Pablo and party set out for a day's work among the cinchonas. As it was the first day of bark-gathering all went along to enjoy the novelty of the thing. A "mancha" of the cinchona trees was not far off, so their journey would be a short one.
"This gentleman is too delicate to sustain our kind of life," suggested Marcoy. "He is tired of skinning his hands and legs in our service, and eating peccary, monkey and snails as we do. His Bolivians are perhaps quite as useful for our service, and while he is rioting at Cuzco we may be enriching ourselves with cinchonas."
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