Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

58
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
pasos in the rapids of the Huallaga, two days'
journey below Lamas. It was not there, however,
that he assassinated his patron, Ursua, but on the
Amazon itself, at some place not well made out, on
New Year's Day, 1561.
Ursua has not been the only adventurer whose
dated from Lamas. When I embarked
miscarriage
at Liverpool, in June 1849, for the mouth of the
Amazon, I was shown by the Messrs. Singlehurst
great piles of a spurious Peruvian Bark, which had
been found to contain no particle of quinine or ol
any cognate alkaloid, and was therefore quite unsaleable.
Its history, as I made it out many years
afterwards, was as follows :
A
certain Don Luis
-, a young Peruvian, of good address and figure,
energetic but restless, and sadly deficient in knowledge
and prudence, whilst occupied as intendant
of a mine near Cajamarca, had heard reports of the
abundance of bark-trees in the lower part of the
valley of the Huallaga, and having obtained specimens
of the leaves and bark, he rashly pronounced
them identical with true Cascarilla, such as he
had seen at Huanuco. Forthwith he persuaded
several other young men some of them of good
family to join him in an expedition in quest of it.
They found it in greatest abundance on the hill ot
Lamas, where they collected what they considered
would make a shipload of it, embarked it on the
Huallaga in rafts, and thus conveyed it all the way
down the Amazon some 2000 miles to the port
of Para. In all the towns on their route their bold
venture created a great sensation. At the city of
Barra (now Manaos), at the mouth of the Rio
Negro, they delayed long enough
for Don Luis to