With a feeling of relief and satisfied curiosity the exploring party left behind them the traces of these children of Nature, and returned toward the river. The cascarilleros, all for their business, had regretted the waste of time, and now betook themselves to an examination of the woods with all their energy. After several hours of march their efforts were crowned with success. Eusebio presently rejoined his employers, showing leaves and berries of the _Cinchona scrobiculata_ and _pubescens_: the peons, on their side, had discovered isolated specimens of the _Calisaya_, which, joined with those found on Mount Camanti, indicated an extended belt of that precious species. This was not the best. A veritable treasure which they had unearthed, worth all the others put together, was a line of those violet cinchonas which the native exporters call _Cascarilla morada_, and the botanists _Cinchona Boliviana_. The trees of this kind were grouped in threes and fours, and extended for half a mile. This repeated proof that the most valuable of all the cinchonas, together with nearly every one of the others, were to be discovered in a small radius along the valley of the Cconi, filled the explorers with triumph, and demonstrated beyond a doubt the sagacity of Don Santo Domingo in organizing the expedition. The purpose and intention of the journey was now abundantly fulfilled. Had the travelers rested satisfied with the liberal indications they had found, and consented to place themselves between the haunts of the savages and the abodes of civilization, with a tendency and determination toward the latter, they might have returned with safety as with glory. The estimate made by Eusebio, however, of the trend or direction of the calisaya groves, induced him to forsake the bed of the Cconi, and strike south-eastwardly, so as to cross the Ollachea and the Ayapata. "But the mountains are disappearing," hazarded Mr. Marcoy. "Will not the cinchonas disappear with them?" "Oh," answered the majordomo, like a pedagogue to a confident school-boy, "the señor knows better how to put ink or color on a sheet of paper than how to judge of these things. The plain, the _campo llano_, is far enough to the east. Before we should see the disappearance of the mountains, we should have to cross as many hills and ravines as we have left behind us." "What do you think of doing, then?" naturally demanded Marcoy, who had long since begun to feel that the expedition had but one chief, and that was the sepia-colored cascarillero from Bolivia, "Everything and nothing," answered Eusebio.