ts use increased
rather than diminished. One of the warmest advocates of the plant was
the Jesuit Don Antonio Julian, who, in a work entitled, "Perla de
America," laments that coca is not introduced into Europe instead of
tea and coffee. "It is," he observes, "melancholy to reflect that the
poor of Europe cannot obtain this preservative against hunger and
thirst; that our working people are not supported by this strengthening
plant in their long-continued labors."[100] In the year 1793, Dr. Don
Pedro Nolasco Crespo pointed out in a treatise the important advantages
that would be derived from the use of the coca plant, if introduced into
the European navies, and he expresses a wish that experiments of its
utility in that way could be tried. Though it is not probable that Dr.
Crespo's wish will ever be realized, yet there is little doubt that the
use of coca as a beverage on board ship would be attended with very
beneficial results. It would afford a nutritious refreshment to seamen
in the exercise of their laborious duties, and would greatly assist in
counteracting the unwholesome effects of salt provisions. As a stimulant
it would be far less injurious than ardent spirits, for which it might
be substituted without fear of any of the evil consequences experienced
by the _coqueros_. After a long and attentive observation of the effects
of coca, I am fully convinced that its use, in moderation, is no way
detrimental to health; and that without it the Peruvian Indian, with his
spare diet, would be incapable of going through the labor which he now
performs. The coca plant must be considered as a great blessing to Peru.
It is an essential means of preserving the nationality of the Indians,
and in some measure mitigating the melancholy fate of that once great
race which disease and excessive labor now threaten to destroy.

In former times the cultivation of coca in the Montana de Vitoc was very
considerable. Upwards of 4,000 arobas used to be annually forwarded to
the market of Tarma. Now only fifty arobas are sent. Vitoc produces no
fodder for horses or mules; those animals, therefore, are very lean and
feeble in this district, and are usually unfit for work after two years.
Indeed, they suffer so much from the attacks of the blood-sucking bat
and the gad-fly (_tabano_), that after being only a few weeks in the
Montana de Vitoc, their strength is exhausted, and they are scarcely
able to reach the Puna. Black cattle, on the con