OCR Text |
Show 414 PLATEAU OF OAXAMARCA. the Great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the Quina-woods in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu. The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed : we heard with astonishment that, at the period of my journey, according to official computations, the collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina Hunters) only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found its way at that time into commerce j the whole was sent from the port of Payta on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 11,000 Spanish pounds, eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and thicker stems have become more and more scarce j but the luxuriance of vegetation is such that the younger trees, which are now resorted to, though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English feet in height. This beautiful tree which is adorned with leaves about 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems always to aspire to rise above its neighbors. As its upper branches wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found, ranges between 12!0 and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit), which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be from their nature but little satisfactory. In Qrder to descend south-south-east from the mountain knot of Loxa to the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the Paramos of Chulucanas, Guamani, and Y amoca-mountain wildernesses of a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10,125 English) feet; they are stormy, often en- |