PART II.
THE PERUVIAN TERRITORY.
BOTANY
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PRESENT STATE OF THE BOTANICAL SCIENCE IN PERU.
IN Peru, botany, considered as a science, was in a manner neglected until towards the close of the eighteenth century. The primitive inhabitants, who were fond of agriculture, and of the empiric practice of medicine, applied themselves to the discovery of the virtues of many plants. The doctrine which was handed down from father to son, together with a certain inclination which prompted them to this study, and the high employment it procured them, rendered them excellent herbalists[1]. The revolutions, however, by which the conquest was was followed, and the mysterious, tenacious, and mistrustful disposition of these Indians[2], have deprived us of many advantages which might have resulted from their long experience. On our side, we have not aimed at recovering these advantages, contenting ourselves with the relics which tradition and history have afforded us[3] . It may be said, that the greater part of the territory we inhabit, has been as unknown to us as are Persia and China.
Europe, mistress of the nations by which the rest of the globe is peopled, has not neglected these countries, but has sent her naturalists to examine them. The travellers, however, who perambulated the Peruvian territory with this intention, prior to the year 1770, made but small advancements in knowledge. The more ancient of them, for want of a due method in arranging their collections, were obliged to bring them within a very narrow compass, to avoid confusion [4]. Those who succeeded them, although possessed of all the requisite notions to class and arrange a great number of specimens, did not profit adequately by their talents, either because they limited their inquiries exclusively to the coast[5], or if they penetrated into the interior, it was solely to experience the grief and mortification of losing the fruits of their precious labours[6].
The year 1778 may be considered as fixing the epoch of the botany of Peru. In the course of that year, the expedition fitted out by command of the Spanish monarch, Charles III. to observe, discover, and derive advantage from the productions which the vegetable kingdom affords in that part of his dominions, reached Peru. It consisted of three sexual botanists, namely, Don Joseph Pabon, for the Court of Madrid; M. Dombey, for that of Paris; and Don Hypolito Ruiz, who may justly be denominated the Linnæus of Peru; aided by several other botanists. The expedition having been concluded, Don Juan Tafaya, and Don Francisco Pulgar, were left behind, to continue the researches, and to found the botanical garden of Lima. It was then that, not merely the plains of the inhabited part of Peru, but likewise the never before explored mountains of the Andes, that rich treasury of the gifts of Nature, in which she has displayed all the powers of her inexhaustible fecundity, were investigated with a nice and scrutinizing eye. It would seem as if, in opposition to art, she has been desirous to manifest, on these mountains, that she needs not the aid of the feeble arm of man, to shew the extent of her vigour and magnificence. Ten years of unceasing application, and of profound study, have been followed by the acquisition of immense botanical riches, and have supplied, in the mother country, the materials for the great work entitled the Flora of Peru.
Emulous of the glory and virtues of his august father, the present sovereign of Spain has afforded an equal protedtion to natural history. A new expedition, commanded by Don Alexandro Malespina, reached Peru in 1790, and explored, as well by sea as by land, every part of the kingdom, principally with a view to accelerate the progress then making in botanical researches[7]. At the same time, the best adapted means have been resorted to, to found a professorship, and augment the collections in the botanic garden of the Capital. Our indefatigable botanist, aided by the skilful draughtsman, Don Francisco Pulgar, is unceasingly occupied, and keeps up a constant communication between the mountains, Lima, and Madrid. The Flora of Peru, augmented by new and continual supplies, will be an eternal monument of the wisdom and magnificence of two sovereigns; a rich accumulation of the treasures of the vegetable kingdom; and the most authentic testimony to prove, that Peru does not abound less in exquisite plants, than in precious metals.
Let it not, however, be thought, that the inestimable collections we have cited, have already exhausted the productions of that nature. The unknown and rare plants which grow on the borders of the Andes, would of themselves form a catalogue. The want of tracks to penetrate into the spacious levels these mountains contain, and to examine the directions of the rivulets and streams by which they are intersected, is an insuperable obstacle to the exact inquiries which, it is trusted, will one day be instituted under more propitious circumstances. It will be seen, in a subsequent part of this work, that a considerable progress has already been made, in exploring several of the Andes mountains, and rendering them of easier access.
The benefits which will accrue to the arts and sciences, from the labours of Don Juan Tafaya, and the lucubrations of the Academical Society of Lima, are incalculable. Agriculture will be ameliorated by the lights which will be thrown on it, and will cease to be neglected, as it has, unfortunately, hitherto been. The commerce of Peru will consequently be augmented, as well by the increase of agricultural produce, as by the discovery of vegetables calculated to nourish and promote the breeds of quadrupeds[8]. This observation applies equally to the plants and shrubs for dyeing, and other purposes, the catalogue of which will be proportionately enlarged[9]. The limits of natural history, physics, and medicine, will be extended; and the latter science will more especially be enriched, not only by new specifics, but likewise by the knowledge of plants, hitherto neglected among us, which may be profitably substituted to those brought from Europe[10].
Such are the advantages which the study of botany holds out to the convenience, the intelligence, and the innocent recreation of man. The Peruvian territory is replete with the productions of the vegetable kingdom; and when the acknowledged talents of the native Peruvians, in whatever regards natural history [11], are considered, there is not any reason to doubt but that every progress will be made in botanic researches.
A fact connected with the botany of Peru ought not to be passed over in this place. It is well known that the animals named llamas, pacos, vicunas, and huanacos, are natives of the lofty mountains of Peru; but a singular particular, which has not been adverted to by any naturalist, is, that although the above mountains extend, under the denomination of Cordilleras, to ten degrees of north latitude, with pretty nearly the same proportions of elevation, cold, &c. these animals do not pass from the line towards the north, and are consequently not to be found in the provinces of Quito, Santa Fé, &c. where the climate, of the mountains at least, is analogous to that of high Peru, in which latter territory the animals in question live naturally, and multiply their species. The sole reason, it would appear, which can be adduced, to account for this extraordinary circumstance, is that, throughout the whole extent of the northern mountains of the Cordillera, a kind of pasture which the Peruvian naturalists name ycho, or ychu, and which is denominated by the authors of the Flora of Peru xarava, is not to be found. This plant belongs to the gramineous tribe, and appears to be the natural food of the vicunas, huanacos, &c. It is extremely abundant in the mountains of Peru; but in those of Quito, Santa Fe, &c. naturalists have not hitherto succeeded in ascertaining its presence.
- ↑ All the historians agree on this head. Many years even after the conquest, the Indians had a higher reputation, as to botanical knowledge, than those who professed medicine. In proof of this, may be cited the proceedings of the assembly holden in the Royal University of St. Mark of Lima, in 1637, to discuss the propriety of founding two professorships of medicine. On this occasion, Dodlor Alonso De Huerta, gratuitous professor of the Quechua tongue, observed as follows: "They are unnecessary, because in this kingdom there are many medicinal herbs, for a variety of diseases and hurts, with which the Indians are better acquainted than the physicians. They cure themselves with them without having need of physicians; and experience demonstrates to us, that many persons, when given over by the faculty, set out for Cercado and Surco" (Indian villages, the former contiguous to, and the other at a small distance from Lima), "to be cured by Indian men and women, and recover the health which their physicians could not give them." The progress made by the Indians in the knowledge of medicinal plants, was in a great measure owing to the prospedt this acquirement held out to them, of being appointed physicians to the Yncas, and distinguished personages a dignity which did not allow them to debase themselves by practising among the common people. The law which expressly enjoined that no one should be idle, and that those, among the people, who were not skilled in agriculture or in warfare, should become herbalists to aid the sick, was equally favourable to this study. For these reasons, we ought to consider the Indians as the fathers and founders of the botany of Peru.
- ↑ The obstinacy with which the Indians endeavoured to conceal their acquirements from the Europeans, may be collected from a document, by Pedro De Osma, dated at Lima, 1568. In this paper he states, that having left his house, in company with several friends, with a view to discover the part in which the bezoar stone is engendered in the vicunas, the Indians not only refused to answer the different questions which were proposed to them on this subject, but likewise would not consent to disclose the secret of the poison they carried about them. Si quidquam de lapldibus scire negabant, ut sunt nobis infesttssimi, nee sua secreta nobis innotcsccre vellent. These secrets having, however, been revealed by a young Indian aged ten or twelve years, his countrymen expressed a wish to cut off his head. Osma took him under his protection; but having aftervifards negledled the necessary precautions for his security, he fell into the hands of the Indians, by whom he was sacrificed.
- ↑ Cieza, Gomara, and Zarate, were the earliest historians who attempted to give a few notices relative to the esculent and medicinal plants of Peru. Garcilaso, Don Antonio Pinelo, and Calancha, followed them with more precision, and with a greater length of detail. With the historians we may connedl the poets: among ours, the only one who has treated this subject is Don Pedro De Peralta, in his work entitled Lima Fundada,
- ↑ Among these travellers, the first, in point of time, is the before-mentioned Pedro De Osma, by profession a soldier, who visited Peru a very short time after the conquest. He described several plants in such a way as to prove that he was not deficient in talents. The second is Father Joseph De Acosta, whose natural history has procured him the title of the Spanish Pliny. He came to Peru about the year 1572, that is, forty years after the death of Atahuallpa, the event by which the epoch of the conquest is established. The third is Doctor Mathias De Porres, physician to the household of the then viceroy of Peru, somewhere about the year 1615. He wrote a work on the virtues of all the fruits and seeds of this kingdom, which was printed at Lima in 1621. He was likewise the author of another work, entitled Concordancies Medicinales (Medicinal Concordances), in which he touched on many of the plants of Peru that possess particular virtues. The fourth and fifth are the Licentiates Calderon and Robles, who wrote, in conjunction, a treatise on the plants of Peru.
- ↑ In the years 1709-10 and 11, Father Louis Feuillé made several excursions along the coasts of Peru, and delineated and described, according to the system of Tournefort, many of the plants which are there found, as may be seen in his diaries.
- ↑ In the year 1736, the celebrated expedition undertaken with a view to measure the terrestrial degrees beneath the Equator, consisting ot the academicians of Paris, Godin, Bouguer, and Condamine, and of Don Juan and Don Antonio De Ulloa, arrived at Peru. M. Jussieu was attached to the academicians in quality of botanist, and M. De Morainville in quality of draughtsman. The former, after having devoted infinite pains and labour to the botany of Peru, on his return to Europe, was plundered, at Buenos-Ayres, of his drawings and specimens, by the boy who attended him, and who fancied that the trunk in which they were contained was replete with treasure. Having been thus deprived of the valuable fruits of his industry and consummate knowledge, he was under the necessity of returning to Lima; but his advanced time of life, and the effect of the fatigues of his continual excursions, prevented him from repairing his loss.
- ↑
The results of this expedition have been highly beneficial to Peru, as well with respect to navigation, as to a more perfect knowledge of the political and civil state of the kingdom, its agriculture, commerce, mineralogy, and, lastly, natural history. Don Antonio Pineda y Ramirez, commandant of the Spanish guards, who may justly be entitled the Waller of Peru, has particularly directed his investigations to lithology, tetrapodology, ornithology, ichthyology, and chemistry. Don Tadeo Haencke, and Don Louis Nee, have undertaken the entire department of botany. The former was the disciple of the celebrated Jacquin. His disquisitions on metallurgy, mineralogy, entomology, Sec. in which he has united to the vivacity natural to his time of life, an uncommon share of information, as well theoretical as pradlical, have done him infinite credit. Don Louis Neé, who possesses equal intelligence and activity, although more advanced in years, has enriched botany with the fruit of his laborious inquiries.
In the historical sketch of the botany of Peru in which we are engaged, we have pointed out the professors and men of science whom we have ascertained to have been in this kingdom, without noticing those who, in Europe or elsewhere, have treated the subject. We shall conclude by citing the distinguished personages by whom the science is protected, and whose names will be transmitted to posterity by the plants which have been dedicated to them. They are as follows: Father Francisco Gonzales Laguna, to whose care the foundation and direction of the botanical garden of Lima have been entrusted. Don Hypolito Ruiz has dedicated to him the Gonzaletia dependens, which inhabits the mountains. Doctor Cosme Bueno, principal cosmographer of Peru, to whom the same botanist has dedicated the Cosmea balsamifera, commonly called Limoncillo. And, lastly, Dodlor Gabriel Moreno, a physician of Lima, to whom M. Dombey has dedicated the Peruana-Morena, vulgarly called Rosario in the district of Chauchin, where it is indigenous. - ↑ In the plains of Bombon is found a herb, named by the Indians callua-callua, which being given every third day to sheep, beginning three months before the shearing time, augments very considerably the growth of their wool. The hualgua, or barba jovis, a species of psoralea, is highly efficacious as a preservative against the rot in sheep.
- ↑ Among the indigenous shrubs which grow spontaneously on the mountains of Peru, is that which bears the coffee. It was discovered in the year 1785, by the Peruvian botanists, Ruiz and Pavon, at the foot of the mountain of Carpis, in the province of Huanuco. The coffee, when prepared, was found to be of an excellent quality.
- ↑ In Peru there are several kinds of hyperlcum, senna, valerian, &c. which are employed with efficacy by the Indians in several of their establishments in Sierra, but which are rejected in the Capital, where a blind preference is given to those imported from distant countries.
- ↑ Franco Davila, a native of Peru, rendered himself celebrated in Paris by his cabinet of natural history, the descriptive catalogue of which, published by him, is justly appreciated by the learned world. After a residence of twenty years in the French capital, he passed to Madrid, by order of Charles III. of Spain, and there founded the cabinet of natural history, of which he had the direction until his death.