nd unless they were supplied with them, it was believed that the favor
of the gods could not be propitiated. It was also deemed necessary that
the supplicator for divine grace should approach the priests with an
_Acullico_ in his mouth. It was believed that any business undertaken
without the benediction of coca leaves could not prosper; and to the
shrub itself worship was rendered. During an interval of more than 300
years Christianity has not been able to subdue the deep-rooted idolatry;
for everywhere we find traces of belief in the mysterious power of this
plant. The excavators in the mines of Cerro de Pasco throw masticated
coca on hard veins of metal, in the belief that it softens the ore, and
renders it more easy to work. The origin of this custom is easily
explained, when it is recollected, that in the time of the Incas it was
believed that the _Coyas_, or the deities of metals, rendered the
mountains impenetrable, if they were not propitiated by the odor of
coca. The Indians, even at the present time, put coca leaves into the
mouths of dead persons, to secure to them a favorable reception on their
entrance into another world, and when a Peruvian Indian on a journey
falls in with a mummy, he, with timid reverence, presents to it some
coca leaves as his pious offering.

Soon after the conquest of Peru, when the Spaniards treated the Indians
and all their customs with contempt, coca became an object of aversion
to the whites. The reverence rendered by the natives to the coca plant
induced the Spaniards to believe that it possessed some demoniacal
influence. The officers of the government and the clergy, therefore,
endeavored, by all possible means, to extirpate its use, and this is one
cause, hitherto overlooked, of the hatred with which the Indians
regarded the Spaniards. In the second council held at Lima, in 1567,
coca was described "as a worthless object, fitted for the misuse and
superstition of the Indians;" and a royal decree of October 18, 1569,
expressly declares that the notions entertained by the natives that coca
gives them strength, is an "illusion of the devil" (_una elusion del
Demonio_). The Peruvian mine owners were the first to discover the
importance of the _chacchar_ in assisting the Indians to go through
their excessive labor, and they, together with the plantation owners,
became the most earnest defenders of coca. The consequence was, that, in
defiance of royal and ecclesiastical ordinances, i