This was their head-quarters during the time that they were collecting seeds and plants; and the severe hardships, miserable lodging, and acute sufferings from illness must increase our admiration for Mr. Spruce's zeal and resolution in performing this great public service.
Mr. Cross, the gardener whom I had engaged to assist Mr. Spruce, conveyed the fifteen Wardian cases, which I had previously sent to Guayaquil, up the river as far as Ventanas, and reached Limon on the 27th of July.
In the mean while Mr. Spruce had carefully examined the chinchona forests, and visited all the bark-trees known to exist within reach of Limon. He found a good crop of capsules on many of them, which had already nearly reached their full size on the finest trees; on others, however, there were only very young capsules, and even a good many flowers, and not one of the late-flowering panicles produced ripe capsules. On the tree which bore most capsules they began to turn mouldy, the mould being not fungi, but rudimentary lichens, which, whilst it proved that the capsules were still alive and growing, proved also that they were exposed to an atmosphere almost constantly saturated with moisture.
The manchon or clump of "red-bark" trees at Limon lies nearly west from the peak of Chimborazo, and the river Chasuan rises on the northern shoulder of that mountain. The view from Limon takes in a vast extent of country, and the whole is unbroken forest, save towards the source of the Chasuan, where a lofty ridge rises above the region of arborescent vegetation, and is crowned by a small breadth of grassy paramo. The waters of the Chasuan run over a black or dull blue, shining, and very compact trachyte, over which, in the bottom of the valleys at Limon, there is a fine-grained ferruginous sandstone of a deep brown colour, in thick strata. The soil is a deep loamy alluvial deposit. The ridges on which the "red-bark" trees grow all deviate a little from an easterly and westerly direction, and the chinchonæ are far more abundant on the northern than on the southern slopes. The northern and eastern sides of the trees, too, had borne most fruit, and scarcely a capsule ripened on their southern and western sides. This is explained by the trees receiving most sun from the east and north, the mornings being generally clear and sunny in the summer, whilst the afternoons are foggy, and the sun's declination is northerly. Mr. Spruce also observed that the trees standing in open ground were far healthier and more luxuriant than those growing in the forest, where they are hemmed in and partially shaded by other trees; and he concludes, from this circumstance, that, though the "red-bark" tree may need shade whilst young and tender, it really requires (like most trees) plenty of air, light, and room wherein to develop its proportions.
The lowest site of the "red-bark" tree at Limon is at an elevation of 2450 feet above the sea, and its highest limit is at an elevation of about 5000 feet. The trees nearest the plain are generally the largest, but those higher up have much thicker bark in proportion to their diameter.
The havoc committed by the bark-collectors on these trees within the last twenty years has been very great. The entire quantity of "red bark" collected in 1859 did not reach to 5000 lbs., and in 1860 no "red bark" at all was got out, so that the trade is nearly extinct. In the valleys of the Chasuan and Limon Mr. Spruce saw about 200 of these trees standing, but only two or three were saplings which had not been disturbed; all the rest grew from old stools, whose circumference averaged from 4 to 5 feet. He was unable to find a single young plant under the trees, although many of the latter bore signs of having flowered in previous years; and this was explained by the flowering trees invariably growing in open places, where the ground was either weeded, or trodden down by cattle.
Mr. Spruce describes the C. succirubra or "red-bark" tree as very handsome, and he declares that, in looking out over the forest, he could never find any other tree at all comparable to it for beauty. It is fifty feet high, branching from about one-third of its height, with large, broadly ovate, deep green, and shining leaves, mixed with decaying ones of a blood-red colour, which give it a most striking appearance.
The Cascarilla magnifolia, a very handsome tree, with a fragrant white flower, grows abundantly with the "red bark," and attains a height of 80 feet.
After the arrival of Mr. Cross at Limon the work of collecting commenced in earnest. A piece of ground was fenced in, and Mr. Cross made a pit and prepared the soil to receive cuttings, of which he put in above a thousand on the 1st of August and following days; and he afterwards went round to all the old stools and put in as many layers from them as possible. "But," as Mr. Spruce most truly observes, "only those who have attempted to do anything in the forest, possessing scarcely any of the necessary appliances, can have any idea of the difficulties, and Mr. Cross's unremitting watchfulness alone enabled him to surmount them."
Towards the end of July, in a few sunny days, the fruit of the "red-bark" trees made visible advances towards maturity; and in the middle of August the capsules began to burst at the base, and appeared ripe. An Indian was then sent up the trees, and, breaking the panicles gently off, let them fall on sheets spread on the ground to receive them, so that the few loose seeds shaken out by the fall were not lost. The capsules were afterwards spread out to dry for some days on the same sheets. In September Mr. Spruce went across to the valley of the San Antonio, to the southward, in order to secure additional seeds from "red-bark" trees there, leaving Mr. Cross to watch over the rooting of the cuttings at Limon. Between the 14th and 19th he gathered 500 well-grown capsules at San Antonio, in addition to 2000 already collected at Limon. Good capsules contain forty seeds each, so that at least 100,000 well-ripened and well-dried seeds were now gathered; and on the 28th of September Mr. Spruce started for Guayaquil.[370] In November he proceeded up the river again, and purchased one of the rafts at Ventanas, which are used for conveying cacao to Guayaquil. It was composed of twelve trunks of raft-wood, sixty-three to sixty-six feet long and one foot in diameter, kept in their places by shorter pieces tied transversely, and covered with bamboo planking, fenced round with rails to a height of three feet, and roofed over. The rope used for binding the parts of the raft together was the twining stem of a Bignonia. The Wardian cases were got ready on the raft at Ventanas, and Mr. Cross arrived with the plants from Limon on the 13th of December, and established them in the cases to the number of 637.