received again his strayed flock, but this time in rags, armed with
ammunitionless guns and one poor knife, wasted by hunger, baked by the
sun, and tattooed like Polynesians by the briers and insects. The
good man could not repress a tear. "Ah, my son," said he as he clasped
Marcoy's hand, "see what it costs to go hunting the cascarilla in the
land of the infidels!"

The explorations started by Don Juan Sanz de Santo Domingo came to
profitable result, but not to his advantage. Three weeks after the
pioneers arrived again in Cuzco, Don Juan started another expedition,
on a much larger scale, to accomplish the working of the cinchona
valleys, under charge of the same Bolivians, who could make like a bee
for every tree they had discovered. A detachment of soldiers was
to protect the party, and the working force was more than double.
Finally, the night before the intended start, the Bolivian
cascarilleros, with their examinador, disappeared together. It is
probable that Don Juan's scheme, nursed, according to custom, with too
much publicity, had attracted the attention of the merchants of Cuzco,
who had found it profitable to buy off the bark-searchers for their
own interest.

The crash of this immense enterprise was too much for Don Juan.
Threatened with creditors, Jews, _escribanos_ and the police, he
retired to a silver-mine he was opening in the province of Abancay.
This mine, in successful operation, he depended on for satisfying his
creditors. He found it choked up, destroyed with a blast of powder by
some enemy. Unable to bear the disappointment, Don Juan blew out his
brains in the office belonging to his mine. A month afterward, Don
Eugenic Mendoza y Jara, the bishop of Cuzco, sent a couple of Indians
for the body, with instructions to throw it into a ditch: the men