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272 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
the is dye made, or we should use it ourselves for our ponchos and
bayetas, and not let foreigners take away so much of it." There
is to this day the same repugnance to using the bark as a febri-
and as exists also in
fuge as Huinboldt remarked sixty years ago,
New Granada, where Cedron and various other substances are
preferred to Quina. I think I can explain this repugnance. The
inhabitants of South America, although few of them have heard
of Dr. Cullen, have a theory which refers all diseases to the
influence of either heat or cold, and (by what seems to them a
simple process of reasoning) their remedies to agents
of the
opposite complexion ; thus, if an ailment have been brought on
by "calor," it must be cured with "frescos"; but if by "frio,"
with "calidos." Confounding cause and effect, they suppose all
fever to proceed from " calor/' Now they consider the cascarilla
a terribly strong " calido," and justly ; so, by their theory (which
is the reverse of Hahnemann's), its use could only aggravate the
symptoms
of fever. . . .
Even at Guayaquil there is such a general disinclination to the
use of quinine that, when the physicians there have occasion to
prescribe it, they indicate it by the conventional term " alcaloide
vejetal," which all the apothecaries understand to mean "sulphate
of quinine," while the is
patient kept in happy ignorance that he
is taking that deadly substance.
The lowest site of the Red Bark at Limon is at an elevation of
2450 feet above the sea, where the Chasuan receives the rivulet
already mentioned as running below our hut. It is precisely the
point where the track from Ventanas leaves the Chasuan (along
whose margin it had run thus far, with a gentle ascent from the
plain) and begins to ascend the steep cuesta separating the
Chasuan from its tributary, the ascent being 350 feet in the first
500 yards ;
so that where the real ascent of the Andes begins there
also begins the Red Bark. At San Antonio, however,
I saw a
tree at a height of no more than 2300 feet ; and, if I might believe
my informants, trees of immense size have been cut down at
points whose height I estimate at barely over 2000 feet. Following
the track leading to Guarancla, the last Bark trees growing by
the roadside are at a height of 3680 feet ; but leaving the track,
and following the hill-side on the left bank of the Limon, there are
Bark trees scattered about for a distance of a league, and up to a
height of near 4500 feet. On the opposite ridge, or that separating
the Limon from the Chasuan, there are also several trees ascend-
I did
ing to a still greater elevation, or nearly to 5000 feet ; but
not take the barometer to these latter, which were all sterile, in
consequence of growing in lofty forest.
The cascarilleros do not usually go in quest of Bark trees
before August, there being generally less fog in that and the
following month than at any other period of the year. The