The flanks of these mountains, however, were really of importance to
the botanical motive of the expedition. Along the side of the Camanti,
where the yellow Garote leaked downward in a rocky ravine, the
Bolivians were again successful. They brought to Marcoy specimens of
half a dozen cinchonas, for him to sketch, analyze and decorate with
Latin names. The colors of two or three of these barks promised
well, but the pearl of the collection was a specimen of the genuine
_Calisaya_, with its silver-gray envelope and leaf ribbed with
carmine. This proud discovery was a boon for science and for commerce.
It threw a new light upon the geographical locality of the most
precious species of cinchona. It was incontestably the plant, and
the Bolivians appeared amazed rather than pleased to have discovered
outside of their own country a kind of bark proper only to Bolivia,
and hardly known to overpass the northern extremity of the valley of
Apolobamba. This discovery would rehabilitate, in the European market,
the quinine-plants of Lower Peru, heretofore considered as inferior to
those of Upper Peru and Bolivia. The latter country has for some time
secured the most favorable reputation for its barks--a reputation
ably sustained by the efforts of the company De la Paz, to whom the
government has long granted a monopoly. This reputation is based on
the abundance in that country of two species, the _Cinchona calisaya_
and _Boliviana,_ the best known and most valued in the market. But
for two valuable cinchonas possessed by Bolivia, Peru can show twenty,
many of them excellent in quality, and awaiting only the enterprise of
the government and the natural exhaustion of the forests to the south.

This magnificent bit of luck, the finding of the calisaya, awakened
in the susceptible bosom of Mr. Marcoy an ardent desire to explore
for himself the site of its discovery. But Eusebio, the chief of the
cascarilleros, assuming a mysterious and warning expression, informed