Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The taste, at once bitter and astringent, and the yellow colour of
the bark led to the discovery of the febrifugal virtue of the
cuspa.
As it blossoms at the end of November, we did not see it in
flower, and we know not to what genus it belongs; and I have in
vain for several years past applied to our friends at Cumana for
specimens of the flower and fruit. I hope that the botanical
determination of the bark-tree of New Andalusia will one day fix
the attention of travellers, who visit this region after us; and
that they will not confound, notwithstanding the analogy of the
names, the cuspa with the cuspare. The latter not only vegetates in
the missions of the Rio Carony, but also to the west of Cumana, in
the gulf of Santa Fe. It furnishes the druggists of Europe with the
famous Cortex Angosturae, and forms the genus Bonplandia, described
by M. Willdenouw in the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin, from
notes communicated to him by us.
It is singular that, during our long abode on the coast of Cumana
and the Caracas, on the banks of the Apure, the Orinoco, and the
Rio Negro, in an extent of country comprising forty thousand square
leagues, we never met with one of those numerous species of
cinchona, or exostema, which are peculiar to the low and warm
regions of the tropics, especially to the archipelago of the West
India Islands. Yet we are far from affirming, that, throughout the
whole of the eastern part of South America, from Porto Bello to
Cayenne, or from the equator to the 10th degree of north latitude
between the meridians of 54 and 71 degrees, the cinchona absolutely
does not exist.
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