[CHAPTER XXI.]
OUR LADY OF YONGAS.
And all my days are trances;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams:
In what etherial dances,
By what eternal streams.
E. A. Poe.
To the Peruvian the province of Yongas de la Paz in the North-East of Bolivia is an El Dorado, because there grows in the greatest profusion and luxuriance his favorite Coca. We may look with delight towards the island of Ceylon, and, in imagination, snuff the fragrant breezes that have passed over the cinnamon groves and coffee plantations; or direct the gaze of our children across the map of the world to South-Eastern China, and inform them that from thence our good dames receive their tea; and thence to the United States, and add that from this place their worthy sires receive the greater part of their tobacco. But the affections of the Peruvian are not so divided; they are located upon one spot, and that the province of the “warm valleys,” or the Yungas de la Paz; there dwells his patron saint, and from thence he receives the “keys of Paradise.”