advance our knowledge of the Cinchona tree and its cultivation. My different efforts to obtain reliable information on the cultivation of the China bark tree in its mother country were especially promoted by my having met, while at Lima, with Mr. Campbell, who, during the many years he has been settled at Tacna, has paid especial attention to the China bark trade. For the chief export of this important medicament is in the hands of the Bolivians, and not of the Peruvians, as the uninitiated might imagine from the name it is usually known by in commerce, viz. Peruvian bark.[151]
The most important facts which I am here enabled to dwell upon relate to the correction of a widespread misconception, that owing to the thirst for plunder and the wilful neglect of the China tree in its own native regions, the supply of the valuable drug obtained from its bark, the well-known Countess'[152] or Jesuit bark, which to the practical physician is of
scarcely less importance than the potato to the labouring man, is daily diminishing. The Calisaya region (i. e. the limits within which the C. Calisaya, the species that furnishes the most valuable bark, is found in its finest and most abundant state) extends from about one degree north of Lake Titicaca, or from 14° 30′ to 20° S. In the forests of Cochabamba, between which place and La Paz is the principal district of the China tree, the tree is more frequently found than in those running parallel on either side with La Paz, in which it is usually met with at such a distance from the capital that it becomes valueless, owing to the cost of transport, which is as high as 17 dollars per 100 lbs. The more southerly forests are still quite virgin, and have never re-echoed the blows of the Cascarilleros' axe. The largest quantity is exported from Tacna through the port of Arica, only a small portion being smuggled northwards from Lake Titicaca, for shipment viâ Port d'Islay. According to statistics, from 8000 to 10,000 cwt. of bark may be thus exported for any lapse of time, without the slightest danger of the tree getting exterminated. Since 1845 the exportation of bark from Bolivia has been a Government monopoly, which has farmed out the privilege to a private company, that used to pay a certain annual premium based on an export of 4000 cwt. The company paid the Cascarilleros or other persons who collected the bark, 25 dollars to 30 dollars for every hundredweight of Calisaya delivered in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The enterprise, however, proved only partially successful, since
speculation, avarice and the continual political troubles and alterations of the Government, have each and all proved sore enemies to the peaceful development of the industry of the country. Each new President had only one thought, viz. how to make the largest profit by seizing on the natural wealth of the country, and only sought to increase the export of the bark for the sake of the monopoly. In 1850 a native commercial house in La Paz paid the bark-gatherers 60 pesos for every 100 lbs., besides a duty to Government of 25 pesos additional, at the same time paying on an estimated export of 7000 cwt. The exorbitant wage thus granted to the Cascarilleros resulted in an enormous quantity of Calisaya being brought to La Paz from all parts of Bolivia, In order to preserve the public tranquillity, and not glut the market, the Bolivian Government now prohibited entirely the cutting or collecting of bark. Within eighteen months about 1400 tons of bark were brought in, and this gave the monopolists a perfect dread lest they should have to declare themselves bankrupt, and it was indeed only through the intervention of Government that they escaped. The latter took the entire stock on their own hands, paid the speculators with Treasury bonds, redeemable within a given number of years, and made a fresh contract with a native firm, which stipulated that the price at La Paz should be 65 dollars per 100 lbs., without further export duty.
As soon as the stock in hand was exhausted, the prohibition against cutting Calisaya had of course to be rescinded,
and in the interim the most decided steps were taken to check the superfluous, indeed dangerous, zeal of the Cascarilleros in the collection of the bark.
While I was in Java chemical experiments had begun to be made with the bark of the young China trees, and from the fact that the valuable alkaloid was not found in these, it was hastily inferred that the bark of the trees grown in their adopted country had, owing to the change effected in climatic and other conditions, been deprived of the principle that made them most valuable in their native land. But researches made in South America have satisfied me, that even in the indigenous forests of Cinchona, the active principle quinine is only found in the bark of older trees, and that its quantity is perceptibly affected by the age of the tree, the finest quinine being obtained in largest quantities from trees upwards of fifty years old. To ignorance of this peculiarity must also be attributed in all probability the fact that, at the period of the Spanish rule, the China collectors or hunters (Cazadores de Quina) used to fell annually 800 or 900 young trees of from four to seven years old, to get at the 110 cwts. of fever-bark, which, intended exclusively for the use of the royal house, were shipped every year from Païta, and thence round the Horn to Cadiz.[153]
So, too, with respect to the quantities annually exported at present from Bolivia and Peru, and used in European stores, there remain serious errors to correct, prevalent even among
scientific circles. According to the latest estimates (which take cognizance of seven inferior sorts), there have been exported, between 1830 and 1860, not more than 10,000 tons, while of Calisaya, the specially valuable red bark (Cascarilla roja), not above 120,000 cwt. have been exported in all during the same period. While the annual export thus dwindles in dimensions from what had generally been supposed, there has lately been discovered in large quantities, in the forests between Tarija, Cochabamba, and La Paz, a species of Cinchona, whose bark is said to possess very much the same properties as the Calisaya. The curate of Tarija has offered for sale 3000 cwt. of this valuable bark (called by the Indians Sucupira). The position of the forests in which this species of Cinchona is found is so favourable for exportation, that the cost of transport from Tarija to Iquique, the nearest port, would only amount to from 8 to 10 dollars per quintal.
The departure of the mail steamer from Callao de Lima was fixed for the afternoon of 12th June, when several of my friends were so kind as to accompany me on board. In Callao I paid a short visit to H.M.S. Ganges, and then the U.S. frigate Merrimac (destined in less than three years to acquire a mournful renown in the horrors of civil war, as also imperishable celebrity as the pioneer of iron navies), one of the finest and most powerful screw-ships of the North American navy, armed at that time with 32 cannon, and of 960-horse power. I had had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the officers of both ships, partly in Valparaiso, partly in Lima.