Superstition and prejudice combined have, however, ennobled this plant in the mind of the Peruvian, and he looks upon it as a true “gift of God.” Its influences and effects are magnified in his own mind into something miraculous, and, indeed, miraculous powers have been attributed to it, for in what other light can we regard the belief current amongst them, that if the miner throws the masticated leaves upon the hard and impenetrable veins of metal, the ore will thereby become softened and be more easily worked? or that the leaves when placed in the mouth of a dead person, ensures it a more favourable reception into the world of spirits? or that when a mummy is met with disentombed from its narrow home, the presentation of a few leaves propitiates its disengaged spirit, and is accepted as a pious offering? Much of the fidelity of the Indian to his coca, as with the smoker to his pipe of tobacco, is due to habit, and in this case the influence of the habit is more powerful, inasmuch as it has been handed down through a long line of ancestors, and is almost the only one which has been preserved. Finally, he finds in its use a distraction, and the only one, which breaks the monotony of his existence. The Peruvian Indians are of a gloomy temperament, and subject to fits of melancholy. When not engaged in out-door work, they will sit in their huts chewing coca and brooding gloomily over their own thoughts; indeed, the combined testimony of travellers establish the fact, that there is in their features an expression of concentrated melancholy, which seems to speak of an undefined but constant suffering; we cannot be astonished at finding such people seeking for comfort in the best substitute for opium that their country will furnish.