, and
clambering up the slippery shoulders of the hill called Huaynapata--the
crossing of half a dozen intervening streamlets going for nothing--that
the explorers were rewarded with a sight of their Canaan, the
bark-producing region. To attain this summit of Huaynapata, however, the
little tributary of Mendoza had to be first got over. This affluent of
the Cconi, flowing in from the south-south-west, was very sluggish as
far as it could be seen. Its banks, interrupted by large rocks clothed
with moss, offered now and then promontories surrounded at the base with
a bluish shade. At the end of the vista, a not very extensive one, a
quantity of blocks of sandstone piled together resembled a crumbling
wall. Other blocks were sprinkled over the bed of the stream; and by
their aid the examinador and the colonel hopped valiantly over the
Mendoza, leaving the peons, who were less afraid of rheumatism and more
in danger of slipping, to ford the current at the depth of their
suspender-buttons.

It was on the top of Huaynapata, while the interpreters built a fire and
prepared for supper a peccary killed upon the road, that Marcoy observed
the examinador holding with his Bolivians a conversation in the Aymara
dialect, in which could be detected such words as _anaranjada_ and
_morada_. These were the well-known commercial names of two species of
cinchona. The historiographer interrupted their conversation to ask if
anything had yet been discovered.

"Nothing yet," replied the examinador; "and this valley of the Cconi
must be bewitched, for with the course that we have taken we should long
ago have discovered what we are after. But this place looks more
favorable than any we have met. I shall beat up the woods to-morrow with
my men, and may my patron, Saint Lorenzo, return again to his gridiron
if we do not date our first success in quinine-hunting from this very
hillock of Huaynapata!"

[Illustration: "THE EXAMINADOR AND THE COLONEL HOPPED VALIANTLY OVER THE
MENDOZA."]

The above style of threatening the saints is thought very efficacious in
all Spanish countries. Whether or not Saint Lawrence really dreaded
another experience of broiling, at the end of certain hours the
Bolivians reappeared, and their chief deposited in the hands of the
colonel a few green and tender branches. At the joyful shout of Perez,
the man of letters, who had been occupied in making a sketch, came
running up. Two different species of cinchona were the