“This plant Coca has been celebrated for many years among the Indians, and they sow and cultivate it with much care and industry, because they all apply it daily to their use and pleasure. “It is indeed of the height of two outstretched arms; its leaves somewhat like those of Myrtle, but larger and more succulent, and green (and they have, as it were, drawn in the middle of them another leaf of similar shape); its fruit collected together in a cluster, which like Myrtle fruit becomes red when ripening, and of the same size, and when quite ripe it is black in colour. When the time of the harvest of the leaves arrives, they are collected in baskets with other things to make them dry, that they may be better preserved, and may be carried to other places. For from their native mountains they are carried to other mountainous parts for the sake of trade, and are exchanged for other goods, such as clothes and flocks, salt and other articles, which stand to these people in the position of money. The seed is enclosed in mastiche, and removed from thence is sown elsewhere in well-cultivated earth in drills or rows, just as we sow the pea or the bean. “Its use for many purposes is common among the Indians, for it is a necessary to them when on a journey, and they also use it when in their homes for their enjoyment, and in this manner—they burn the shells of oysters and other shells, and thus make the lime into a powder, then they grind up the Coca leaves with their teeth, this they mix with the powder of the burnt shells, and thus mingle both at once, but the quantity of lime, however, must be less than the amount of leaf; from this mass they prepare small balls or lozenges, and expose them to dry. “When they require to use these, they take one little ball into the mouth, and suck it, turning it now this way now that way as long as they can retain it; one being consumed, they take another, and then a third, proceeding thus the whole time they have need during their long journeys, especially if they are in neighbourhoods where neither bread nor water are plentiful, because they assert that by this suction of these little balls their thirst is removed, and their strength preserved.