Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/773

Rh An English gentleman staying at Jamaica in 1789, received from a Mr. Reader, who had just returned from a visit to Peru, a small horn spoon and a calabash containing about a pound of a white powder; accompanied with the information that the Indians, when travelling, took a spoonful of the powder whenever they felt hungry, and if thirsty as well, washed it down with a draught of water; and thus provided could compass a thousand miles afoot without requiring anything else in the way of refreshment. Upon examination the white powder proved to be nothing but lime from calcined oyster-shells; such as, many years later, Humboldt saw set out for sale in the public market at Popayan, for eating with dried coca-leaves, or for mixing with chewed leaves preparatory to being made up into pellets or pills.

Ulloa declares the Indians thought so much of cuca or coca, that rather than go without it, they would part with anything or everything they possessed. "They put," he says, "into their mouths a few coca-leaves and a suitable portion of a kind of chalk called membi, and chewing them together, at first spit out the saliva which that manducation causes, but afterwards swallow it; and then move it from one side of the mouth to the other, till the substance is quite drained." The herb, he avers, fortifies the stomach and preserves the teeth, and is so nutritive and invigorating, that the chewers of it could labour whole days without taking any other food. Another writer depones that coca-eaters can work for eight or ten days without sleeping, untroubled by hunger, thirst, or fatigue. After this we are not surprised to learn that the Bolivian Indians, who take coca from infancy, are able to hold their own easily with mule-mounted travellers. Such among them as have won for themselves a reputation as "good walkers" are employed to carry government despatches, being capable of accomplishing twenty leagues a day for several successive days with nothing to sustain their energies save coca and lipta — a preparation of cooked potatoes, pounded into a pulp and burned to ashes with a maize-cob, which imparts a pleasant saline flavour to the otherwise insipid coca-leaf.

The Indian and half-caste women of the Upper Amazons are given to indulge overmuch in ypadin, made by baking coca-leaves in an oven, pounding them in a wooden mortar until half-pulverized, and then mixing them with the ashes of the burnt leaves of the candelabrum-tree, in order to neutralize the evil effect of pure coca-powder. As coca-eating happens to be abhorrent to the ruling powers in Ega, the ypadin-loving dames are compelled to raise their coca-trees in retired forest nooks, to hide away their modest gatherings, and take their solace secretly. Mr. Bates thinks that ypadin does no harm if taken in moderation; but if indulged in to excess, it destroys the appetite, and in time produces great nervous exhaustion. Humboldt, conceding that Indian messengers can travel for many days without any other aliment, pronounces against the use of the delectable mixture of leaves and lime, on the ground that, while exciting the secretion of the saliva and of the gastric juice, it takes away the appetite without affording any nutriment to the body; and an Edinburgh Reviewer, disgusted with a traveller's laudation of coca, does not scruple to assert that it is certain those who used it were remarkably short-lived. The Bolivian Indians, however, if we may accept the testimony of one who lived some years among them, are rather remarkable for their longevity; and if the coca-leaf is really very deleterious, it is hard to understand how it has retained its repute so many hundred years.

Supposing coca to be all its admirers assert, it does not follow that its introduction into countries yet blissfully ignorant of its virtues is at all desirable. Your coca-eater only works by fits and starts, ordinarily he ranks amongst the laziest of the lazy. Besides, what may be meat to the Indian in the healthiest tropical land in the world, may be poison to the energetic sons of colder climes; and the fact that in South America coca-eating is steadfastly eschewed by the ruling race, speaks strongly against the vaunted harmlessness of the practice. It is impossible it should be harmless; neither the body nor the mind can be defrauded of due sustenance and rest with impunity; though the payment of the penalty be deferred for a time, it is sure to be exacted. Of stimulants we have enough and to spare. Those already used and abused may very well suffice those who cannot, get along without something of the kind. Nobody that we know of wants to work day and night, or to dispense with meat and drink. Even if anybody does, it is possible that their end may be achieved by other means. From the Moluccas to the Yellow River, from the Ganges and the Indus to the shores of the Black Sea, the betel-leaf is, as old Gerarde says, "not only unto the silly Indian meat, but also drink in their tedious travels, 