could be desired. It grants further leave of absence to both its great geographical captains to July, 1864, with pay: and thus we shall have their books prepared under the most advantageous conditions. The Pasha of Egypt sent up a steam-boat to bring down the men he delighted to honour; and we have heard of them, not only by Speke’s letter to Murchison, but from gazers who saw them at Assouan, at Thebes, at Cairo. I am writing of them as still in Africa; but before what I write is published, they will doubtless be in London, being expected there for the meeting of the Geographical Society on the 8th of June.
One speculation on such occasions is whether men who have done such a deed can ever relish ordinary life like other people. Captain Speke is, we are told, about forty years of age, of great stature and strength. It does not seem probable that he will settle down into ordinary military life, any more than Park could settle down into his old practice as a country surgeon. Perhaps our heroes may find new fields of exploration. Meantime, they have enough to do for many months to come in bringing us up to the knowledge which the Pharaohs and the Greeks longed for in vain.
Together with news of commercial profits of ten per cent. per month at Khartoum, we hear promises of a telegraph wire above Khartoum, and rails up to nobody knows where, and across to the Red Sea. If such things are possible to the great power of the Pasha, we may learn more than we ever hoped of the inhabitants of the regions where the old gods are certainly not living at this day. But those of us who are neither statesmen nor commercial speculators are in no hurry for more than we have got. Sufficient for our day is it that somebody has stood at the source of the Nile.
PERUVIAN BARK AND THE TREES WHICH YIELD IT.
On the slopes and in the ravines of the Andes, in the more northern parts of South America, within the tropics, but at elevations where the climate is temperate, in scattered groups amidst dense forests, or, higher on the mountains, singly and in clusters on the ridges where the guanaco and vicugna feed, grow the trees of the genus Cinchona, natives of no other part of the world, but yielding a medicine of inestimable value, and with which, as a remedy for the intermittent fevers of warm and moist countries, no other febrifuge is worthy to be compared. For these trees, and these alone, produce the long celebrated Peruvian bark, and Peruvian bark is the only source of quinine.
We are apt to wonder that a boon so precious should have been bestowed in this way, instead of being lavished at once on the inhabitants of all quarters of the globe. But a little reflection shows that this is at least no exceptional instance of its kind, but accordant with a great general law of creation and providence. When we inquire into the distribution of the different kinds of plants and animals existing in the world, we find that most of them are natives only of certain countries; and even those which, because of their long-proved value, have been most widely diffused through the care and agency of man, appear to have been at first limited to some of the early seats of civilisation. And thus scope has been afforded for the cultivation of man’s own faculties, and for the beneficial exertion of all human energies.
It seems probable that the medicinal properties of the bark of the cinchonas were known to the Indians before the Spanish conquest, although a long time elapsed ere they communicated their knowledge to their conquerors. The Jesuit missionaries on the upper tributaries of the Amazon were perhaps the first Europeans who became acquainted with the nature of this bark, and towards the end of the seventeenth century they began to send parcels of it to Rome. Hence it received the name of Jesuits’ Bark. Cardinal Juan de Lugo distinguished himself by his endeavours to promote its use; and the name Cardinal’s Bark was therefore often given to it. It was also called Countess’s Bark, from the Countess of Cinchon, or Chincon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, by whom it was brought to Spain as early as 1640, although it did not then get into extensive reputation or use. She had been cured by it, two years before, when she lay ill of a severe intermittent fever at Lima: and to her physician its value had been made known by the Corregidor of Loxa, who himself, in similar distress, had received information of it from an Indian.
Whilst this medicine was still scarcely known in Europe, except among the Jesuits of Spain and Italy, an Englishman, Sir Robert Talbor, or Talbot, having become acquainted with it, acquired a great reputation for his wonderful success in the cure of intermittents. Louis XIV. of France purchased the secret from him for two thousand louis d’ors, a large pension, and a title, and immediately made it public. The price was at first enormous, one hundred louis d’ors a pound. But the fame of Peruvian Bark was now established, and it soon became an important article of commerce. Some, indeed, of the physicians of the time derided it, and repelled the innovation, as in more recent times a few have been found to oppose the introduction of chloroform. But all controversy on this subject ceased at an early date in the eighteenth century; and so great was the demand for Peruvian Bark, that even in 1735 apprehensions were entertained of the probable extirpation of the trees producing it in the forests of Loxa, where alone they were then known to exist. The first botanical description of a Peruvian Bark tree was published shortly afterwards by the French botanist De la Condamine, and the name Cinchona was given to the genus by Linnæus, in commemoration of the Countess of Cinchon.
The Spanish Government, towards the end of last century, sent botanical expeditions to explore the forests of different parts of South America, in order to the discovery of bark trees; but through the influence of parties interested in maintaining a commercial monopoly, the value of some of the new species discovered was concealed, and large quantities of bark which had been collected were destroyed; and thus, through a vile cupidity and a mistaken political economy, one of the most