Lith. of P.S. Duval & Co. Phil.
COCA PLANTATION, Peru.
Monday, September 22.—At 3 30, thermometer, 81°. We are now on the eastern frontier settlement, where one hundred men are engaged cultivating the coca plant. The seed is planted in rows like maize. In two years the bush, five or six feet high, is full grown, bearing bright green leaves, two inches long, with white blossoms, and scarlet berries. The women and boys are now gathering the ripe leaves, while the men are clearing the fields of weeds. The gathering takes place three times a year, in cotton bags. The leaf is spread out in the sun on mats and dried. In wet weather they are spread under cover, and kept perfectly dry, otherwise the quality is injured, and the market price very much reduced. The bushes produce from forty to seventy years, when a new planting becomes necessary. The leaves are put up in cotton cloth bales of seventy-five pounds each, and sent to Cuzco, where it sells for fifteen dollars per bale. The Indians masticate the leaf, and sometimes drink it as tea. There is a constant demand for it. Those who work in the mines are inveterate chewers. On long journeys, or while undergoing fatigue of any kind, it supplies the place of the tobacco leaf. It has a soothing effect. Slacked lime or ashes from certain roots are used by some of the old chewers to give it a finer flavor. The plant can only be raised in a moist climate. It is never found in the deep valleys of the Andes. It offers the most important inland trade in the department of Cuzco, and is the inducement for settlers to venture to the base of the Andes. Though the tropical productions can be raised, they are seldom cultivated to great extent. Coffee, sugar-cane, cotton, rice, chocolate, tobacco, limes, and lemons, are to be had. The padre pays attention to experimental farming and cattle raising; he has a little drove, a few cows brought from the tops of the Andes; also ducks, pigeons, and chickens, which he feeds upon corn cultivated by his own hands. His upland rice is fine, without flooding. The padre is a perfect representative of Robinson Crusoe; though he has no goats, he has four dogs. An old Santa Cruz soldier acts as his man Friday. In his little hut he has a few books and two old hats. He wears one when he works on his farm, the other an old hen lays an egg in every day. He seems to be happy, but said he wanted very much to go home to Italy, by the way of the Rio Madre-de-Dios and the Amazon, for he thought if he could find a road to the Atlantic by which his countrymen might come up, he would make a fortune.
I had arrived at the end of the road for mules. The only way to shorten the distance between us and the Atlantic was to dismount and cut a way through the forest on foot. The undergrowth is so thick, that it is difficult to see where the tigers and other wild animals get through.
José was left in charge of the mules. With a barometer and poncho slung to my back, revolver in belt, long knife in hand, I pushed through the woods, accompanied by the padre, Leechler, and four Indians; the padre whistled up his dogs. After a most difficult struggle, twelve hours brought us to the bank of the Cosnipata river, in the territory of the Chuncho savages. The stream is very swift, with a rocky bed, forty yards wide; the water of greenish color. This stream takes its rise to the south, in the mountains of Carabaya, where the people are washing for gold. The day's march was through a level country, with the exception of two small hills. Leechler shot two wild turkeys, and a fine fish, which helped out boiled rice and parched corn for supper. We had been very much bitten by ants and stung by bees. The right arms were tired of cutting a way with the machetes. According to our reckoning, we have travelled nine miles; a bush house was constructed; our beds, the bare ground; the dogs lay by us; they had ranged about in all directions during the day, and were well tired. The padre called one of them Paititi, after a large town of the Chunchos, in the wilderness to the northeast of us; another Alerto, (vigilant;) a third Cabezon, (big head;) and the fourth, Valedor, (protector.) Paititi was a middle-sized, short-tailed, chocolate-colored dog, the bravest and most active. The padre kindly presented him to me. One of the Indians was taken sick; I administered three anti-bilious pills, which cured him after a sleep. Cutting enough balsa wood early in the morning, the logs were fastened together, and the first North American-built raft launched upon this tributary of the Amazon. I embarked with Leechler and one old Indian for the opposite shore. There were falls above and below us; the current swift; we poled part of the way, but soon found the river too deep for that process. We landed on a rocky little island, after being nearly carried over the falls; Leechler lost the balsa on his return for the padre; the current was too swift for him, and he had to swim for life, while our bark was swiftly carried down stream, and wrecked against the rocks. At 1 p. m., thermometer in the sun, 100°; temperature of the river water, 70°. In the evening, Leechler had been working with the padre and the Indians, cutting more timber. He swam over, and spent the night on the island with me, in preference to sleeping in the woods; we lay down upon the rocks, under a heavy rain, with loud claps of thunder, which echoed up the Andes. At midnight, the old Indian called us from our bed of water; the river was rising; the night was dark, and rain poured down. A match was lit, when it was discovered we could not escape; we saw the rushing waters between us and the shore; a sudden rise of three feet would carry us off. Leechler assured me we could not gain the shore by swimming. The old Indian said "I was a bad man for bringing him there, when he could not swim." A mark was placed by the edge of the water, and we seated ourselves very uncomfortably to await our fate. The roaring of the waters was terrible. Leechler looking at the mark, finds our island very much reduced in size by the flood. The old Indian hears the dogs bark, and we think the Chunchos are attacking the padre on the main land; I blamed myself for bringing these people so far. Should the stream continue to rise at its present rate, we must be lost; suddenly, the old Indian looking up, turned to me with brightening eyes, pointed to the southeast, and said in Quichua, "day-break." This was great relief, particularly as I saw the Indian smile; it was expressive, natural, and knowing. As the day-light came, the storm cleared off, and we survey our prison. The waters had turned muddy, the drift-wood came dancing by us, great logs rolled over as they floated down; the wild Toucan, with its large beak, screamed as it flew over us to its nest; the fish seemed to rejoice at the flood, jumping up in the air as though making signs for the river to rise; while the good old padre, dressed in his snuff-colored robes, motioned to us the waters were subsiding. The waves made by the rapid motion of the water in mid-channel were quite as high as our heads, and the island much reduced in size. The water runs off very soon after the storm passes away, and we gained the opposite mainland. Leechler lost a second balsa in trying to cross the stream to the island again for the Indian, and another night was spent with the party divided. Our provisions were getting short. A small bamboo balsa was now constructed, the barometer, pistols, and clothing put upon it. My provisions were left with the old Indian, and he was told to remain there until we returned. He said, "if he was left alone, the Chunchos would murder him, or the tigers would devour him at night; if we left him he would jump into the river;" but he was again directed to remain where he was while we sought help, to take care of his provisions, and he would soon be with his friends. He told Leechler he would obey, but "he must first bring over his coca," which was on the opposite side.
With Leechler on one side of the bamboo raft and I on the other, we jumped into the stream, and after hard work, swimming, we gained the padre in time to save our raft from passing over the falls. In the evening we were at San Miguel farm, after three days' hard work, and two nights without sleep. Resting ourselves we found great difficulty in getting persons to go with us after the old Indian. The padre made a spirited speech to them, which had the desired effect. In the evening we encamped at the junction of the Tono and Cosnipata rivers. To my great joy, the old Indian came down opposite to us, after being called by Leechler. In the morning early, we felled a tree across the Tono, where it cuts through a mass of rocks, and descending along the banks of that stream for some distance, we came to a smooth place in the river. Another raft was built which rescued the old Indian, but was also lost, and we saved the men by felling a large tree on the rocks to which they clung. The old Indian had eaten all he had the night we left him, and was now very hungry; he was delighted to get his coca, and handed me the cigars I gave him to smoke. He amused the other Indians, telling them how the white man had treated him. After following the Tono all day, we came to the river Piñipiñi, a stream as large as the Tono, with an average width of forty yards. I saw at once we could get no further, but it was a satisfaction to behold these two rivers, the Tono and Piñipiñi, join and form the head of the river called by the Quichua Indians Amaru Mayu, (serpent-river,) which Padre Revello had not long since named "Rio Madre-de-Dios," for the reason the Chunchos had killed a number of Creoles and Quichua Indians, and after destroying their little church, had thrown the catholic image into a tributary stream, whence it had floated down, and was found on a rock in the centre of Amaru-Mayu.
This stream is very swift, about seventy yards wide, and not navigable at the point I saw it, which is in latitude 12° 32´ south, longitude 70° 26´ west of Greenwich, and by barometrical measurement 1,377 feet above the Pacific ocean; showing a descent from the first flower on the side of the ridge in sight of 9,723 feet; small hills intercept our view of the river after it turns. Leechler informs me that the cascarilleros, from prominent places on this side of the Andes, have seen Indians crossing the "Madre-de-Dios" in canoes, among the islands, a short distance below us; and that the river is very winding in its course through a level country. The padre has seen a stream called "Marcapata," to the west of us, flowing northwest, which probably falls into the Madre-de-Dios below.
The country is a beautiful one; well watered, and from its general appearance adapted for cultivation, though wild and unpopulated as far as we have seen, except by monkeys of different species, who are very busy in the evening cutting into the bamboo stalks for the water therein, which they take as their tea.
We feel great anxiety to visit the island in a Chuncho canoe; to make friends under the shade of a plantain orchard; to contract at the door of these Indians for a passage to the Amazon, and go home by this route. Besides, I wished to see the effect produced on these wild men by a present, from the padre, of angels, pictures drawn from a long tin box under his arm; but it is impracticable, and we lay down by the head of the Madre-de-Dios, to sleep till morning, with thirty-eight leagues by the road to travel back to Cuzco.