Leaving the dense and weirdly impressive tropical forests of the hinterland, the rolling areas of the _yungas_ ascend toward the plateau—a succession of vast gardens delicately scented and brilliant with color. As the country is coming more under cultivation each year the traveler’s eye rests frequently upon plantations of coffee, cacao, and coca, the plant from which we get cocaine. The coca leaf is highly prized by the native as a stimulant; he chews it as a Northerner would chew tobacco but with a better excuse, since by its use he can perform great feats of endurance and go many hours without food. With his pouch filled with coca leaves and a small supply of parched Indian corn, he can run fifty miles a day, for these fleet-footed Indians constitute the telegraph system of this region. The output of the _cocales_, or coca plantations, was nearly nine million pounds last year. This is also the home of the highly nutritious if impossibly named _jamacch’ppeke_ plant, which, when dried and powdered and mixed with water, produces a delicately flavored milk much used in hospitals and even for babies. Higher up in the _valle_ zone wheat and corn fields may be seen as well as the famous _chincona_ tree, so named because, in 1638, the Condesa de Chinchon (wife of the Peruvian Viceroy) wrote of her wonderful cure from malaria by an Indian draught prepared from the bark of this tree. It has been known since as chincona or Peruvian bark, but it was not until 1820 that the French chemist, Pelletier, extracted from the tree the calisaya or quinine with which we are now familiar, and which, by the way, is said to be one of the two or three natural specifics ever yet discovered for disease. On these slopes also grows the new substitute for wheat, _quinua_, a grain more nutritious and more cheaply produced than its northern prototype, also the delicious _camote_, a delicately flavored type of sweet potato, the _palta_, known in Cuba and Mexico as the _aguacate_ and in Florida as the alligator pear, which makes the rich salad, and all variations of the sweet, pulpy fruits like the pomegranate, _granadilla_, _capote_, etc. This is also one of the homes of the nutmeg, olive, and castor bean, and of sugar, cotton, oranges, cinnamon, vanilla, saffron, indigo, and ginger; also of a remarkable variety of medicinal plants: for instance, those from which are derived aconite, arnica, absinthe, belladonna, camphor, quassia, cocaine, digitalis, gentian, ginger, ipecaque, jalap, opium, sarsaparilla, tamarind, tolu and valerian. The Indians of this belt are the most artistic leather workers in the world, and their beautiful _ponchos_ (a sort of circular cape the mountaineers wear, with a hole in the center for the head to go through), woven from native silk, are eagerly sought by all visitors.