forms a
drink. On the upper waters grow the celebrated coca, a shrub with small,
light-green leaves, having a bitter, aromatic taste. The powdered
leaves, mixed with lime, form _ypadu_. This is to Peruvians what opium
is to the Turk, betel to the Malay, and tobacco to the Yankee. Thirty
million pounds are annually consumed in South America. It is not,
however, an opiate, but a powerful stimulant. With it the Indian will
perform prodigies of labor, traveling days without fatigue or food. Von
Tschudi considers its moderate consumption wholesome, and instances the
fact that one coca-chewer attained the good old age of one hundred and
thirty years; but when used to excess it leads to idiocy. The signs of
intemperance are an uncertain step, sallow complexion, black-rimmed,
deeply-sunken eyes, trembling lips, incoherent speech, and stolid
apathy. Coca played an important part in the religious rights of the
Incas, and divine honors were paid to it. Even to-day the miners of Peru
throw a quid of coca against the hard veins of ore, affirming that it
renders them more easily worked; and the Indians sometimes put coca in
the mouth of the dead to insure them a welcome in the other world. The
alkaloid cocaine was discovered by Woehler.

Flowers are nearly confined to the edges of the dense forest, the banks
of the rivers and lagunes. There are a greater number of species under
the equator, but we have brighter colors in the temperate zone. "There
is grandeur and sublimity in the tropical forest (wrote Wallace, after
four years of observation), but little of beauty or brilliancy of
color." Perhaps the finest example of inflorescence in the world is seen
in the _Victoria Regia_, the magnificent water-lily discovered by
Schoemberg in 1837. It inhabits the tranquil waters of the shallow lakes
which border the Amazon. The leaves are from fifteen to eighteen feet in
circumference, and will bear up a child twelve years old; the upper part
is dark, glossy green, the under side violet or crimson. The flowers are
a foot in diameter, at first pure white, passing, in twenty-four hours,
through successive hues from rose to bright red. This queen of
water-plants was dedicated to the Queen whose empire is never at once
shrouded in night.

[Illustration: Coca-plant.]

CHAPTER XX.

Life within the Great
River.--Fishes.--Alligators.--Turtles.--Porpoises and Manatis.

The Amazon is a crowded aquarium, holding representatives o