Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/526

510 cut down and peel them. The trees are first decorticated from the ground up as far as can be reached, and then, after felling and removing the clinging vines and mosses, the rough, outer bark is beaten off with a club or mallet. The bark is then cut around the trunk in sections of two to three feet, and longitudinally in strips of six to eight inches in width, then removed with the blade of a machete.

When first taken from the tree the inner surface of cinchona-bark shows a handsome cream-tint, but, on exposure to the atmosphere, rapidly darkens to a dirty red. The barks are usually taken to the main camp for drying and storage. The thick bark of the trunk requires great care in drying, because of the excessive dampness of the atmosphere, which sometimes necessitates the use of artificial heat to prevent molding; it is piled up in tiers with sticks between the layers to allow free circulation of air, and heavy stones or fragments of rocks are placed on top to flatten it. The thin bark from the young trees and small limbs dries more rapidly, and rolls itself up into quills.

One of the greatest difficulties connected so far with the gathering of cinchona-bark is that of transporting it to the coast at the end of the season. It is roughly sorted, mainly according to the part of the tree from which it is obtained, and packed in bales of about one hundred and fifty pounds each; the Indians carry these bales on their backs a distance of sometimes hundreds of miles to a transfer warehouse, whence it can be transported by mules to the nearest shipping place. The worn appearance of most flat bark of commerce is due to the long friction which it undergoes during transportation.

The Indians, in carrying bark, bear the main weight of the burden upon their heads, by placing over the forehead a strip of rawhide to which are attached cords of the same material lashed to the bale; they stoop forward to maintain their equilibrium, and use long Alpine sticks to steady and aid them in ascending or descending dangerous cliffs. The skeletons of hundreds of wretched peons can be seen in the far depths of the chasms below of some of the older trails, bleaching beneath the tropical sun, whose earthly toils were ended by a misstep on the verge of one or the other frightful precipice, and now and then ghastly human skulls are seen placed in niches or crevices in the projecting rocks of the mountain-sides along the narrow passage, suggestive of lurking dangers. Another fearful terror to the Indians is the malarial fevers, to which they quickly yield, owing to great exposure and want of nutritious food. It was said that, during a recent severe malarial season, as many as twenty-five per cent, of the Indians employed in one district died from fevers before the harvest was completed, and it is only by extreme poverty, or obligations as peons, that they are induced to enter the bark forests to encounter the dangers for the meager pittance of ten to twenty-five cents per day.

The final sorting and classifying of bark are done at the main