A position similar to that of Mutis in New Granada had also been conferred in 1777 on the botanists Hipolito Ruiz and José Pavon with regard to southern Peru, whence originated the well-known Flora Peruviana et Chilensis,[1314] as well as most important direct contributions to our knowledge on the subject of Cinchona.
About the same time (1776), Renquizo (Renquifo or Renjifo) found cinchona trees in the neighbourhood of Huanuco, in the central tract of Peru, whereby the monopoly of the district of Loxa was soon broken up.
Numerous and important quinological discoveries were subsequently made by Mutis, or rather by his pupils Caldas, Zea, and Restrepo,[1315] as well as on the other hand by Ruiz and Pavon, and their successors Tafalla and Manzanilla. Mutis did not bring his labours to any definite conclusion, and his extensive botanical collections and 5,000 coloured drawings, were sent to Madrid only in 1817, and there remained in a lamentable state of neglect.
Some of his observations first appeared in print in 1793-94, under the title of El Arcano de la Quina in the Diario, a local paper of Santa Fé, and were reprinted at Madrid in 1828 by Don Manuel Hernandez de Gregorio. The botanical descriptions of the cinchonas of New Granada, forming the fourth part of the Arcano, remained forgotten and lost to science until rescued by Markham and published in 1867.[1316] The drawings belonging to the descriptions were photographed and engraved a little later, and form part of Triana’s Nouvelles Etudes sur les Quinquinas, which appeared in 1870.
The two Peruvian botanists succeeded somewhat better in securing their results. Ruiz in 1792, in his Quinologia,[1317] and in 1801 conjointly with Pavon in a supplement thereto, brought together a portion of their important labours relating to cinchona. But an essential part called Nueva Quinologia,[1318] written between 1821 and 1826, remained unpublished; and after an oblivion of over thirty years, it came by purchase into the hands of Mr. John Eliot Howard, who published it, and with rare liberality enriched it with 27 magnificent coloured plates, mostly taken from the very specimens of Pavon lying in the herbarium of Madrid.
Between the pupils of Mutis on the one hand, and those of Ruiz and Pavon on the other, there arose an acrimonious controversy regarding their respective discoveries, which has been equitably summarized by Triana in the work just mentioned.
Production—The hardships of bark-collecting in the primeval forests of South America are of the severest kind, and undergone only by the half-civilized Indians and people of mixed race, in the pay of speculators or companies located in the towns. Those who are engaged in the business, especially the collectors themselves, are called Cascarilleros or Cascadores, from the Spanish word Cascara, bark. A major-domo at the head of the collectors directs the proceedings of the several bands in the forest itself, where provisions and afterwards the produce are stowed away in huts of slight construction.
Arrot in 1736, and Weddell and Karsten in our own day, have given from personal observation a striking picture of these operations.
The cascarillero having found his tree, has usually to free its stem from the luxuriant climbing and parasitic plants with which it is encircled. This done, he begins in most cases at once to remove, after a previous beating, the sapless layer of outer bark. In order to detach the valuable inner bark, longitudinal and transverse incisions are made as high as can be reached on the stem. The tree is then felled, and the peeling completed. In most cases, but especially if previously beaten, the bark separates easily from the wood. In many localities it has to be dried by a fire made on the floor of a hut, the bark being placed on hurdles above,—a most imperfect arrangement. In Southern Peru and Bolivia however, according to Weddell, even the thickest Calisaya bark is dried in the sun without requiring the aid of the fire.
The thinner bark as it dries rolls up into tubes or quills called canutos or canutillos, while the pieces stripped from the trunks are made to dry flat by being placed one upon another and loaded with weights, and are then known as plancha or tabla. The bark of the root was formerly neglected, but is now in several instances brought into the market.