age that its use should have been
for a long time opposed by Protestants and favored by Catholics. In
1679, Louis XIV. bought the secret of preparing quinquina from Sir
Robert Talbor, an English doctor, for two thousand louis-d'or, a large
pension and a title. Under the Grand Monarch it was used at dessert,
mingled with Spanish wine. The delay of its discovery until the
seventeenth century has probably lost to the world numbers of valuable
lives. Had Alexander the Great, who died of the common remittent fever
of Babylon, been acquainted with cinchona bark, his death would have
been averted and the partition of the Macedonian empire indefinitely
postponed. Oliver Cromwell was carried off by an ague, which the
administration of quinine would easily have cured. The bigotry of
medical science, even after its efficacy was known and proved, for a
long time retarded its dissemination. In 1726, La Fontaine, at the
instance of a lady who owed her life to it, the countess of Bouillon,
composed a poem in two cantos to celebrate its virtues; but the
remarkable beauty of the leaves of the cinchona and the delicious
fragrance of its flowers, with allusions to which he might have adorned
his verses, were still unknown in Europe.

The cinchonas under favorable circumstances become large trees: at
present, however, in any of the explored and exploited regions of their
growth, the shoots or suckers of the plants are all that remain.
Wherever they abound they form the handsomest foliage of the forest. The
leaves are lanceolate, glossy and vividly green, traversed by rich
crimson veins: the flowers hang in clustering pellicles, like lilacs, of
deep rose-color, and fill the vicinity with rich perfume. Nineteen
varieties of cinchonae have been established by Doctor Weddell. The
cascarilleros of South America divide the species into a category of
colors, according to the tinge of the bark: there are yellow, red,
orange, violet, gray and white cinchonas. The yellow, among which figure
the _Cinchona calisaya, lancifolia, condaminea, micrantha, pubescens,_
etc., are placed in the first rank: the red, orange and gray are less
esteemed. This arrangement is in proportion to the abundance of the
alkaloid _quinine,_ now used in medicine instead of the bark itself.

The specimens found by the examinador were carefully wrapped in
blankets, and the march was resumed. After a slippery descent of the
side of Huaynapata and the passage of a considerable n