In 1846 Don Pablo Pimentel was appointed Sub-prefect of Caravaya, and he endeavoured, by giving a glowing account of its vast capabilities, to induce the government to make roads and develop the resources of this important province. Shortly afterwards, in 1849, Caravaya attracted notice as a land rich in the precious metal, and it soon became the California of South America. In July of that year two brothers named Poblete, in searching for chinchona-bark, discovered great abundance of gold-dust in the sands of one of the Caravaya rivers, and the news soon spread far and wide. Up to 1852 crowds of adventurers, among whom were many Frenchmen, continued to follow in the footsteps of the Pobletes, but most of them returned empty, and the excitement has now died away. The trade in chinchona-bark, which once was remunerative, and in which many Peruvians displayed extraordinary energy and endurance of fatigue, ceased to exist in 1847, owing to the habit of adulterating the Calisaya bark with inferior kinds, which gave the Caravaya article a bad name in the market, and at length rendered it unsaleable. This adulteration was practised either through fraud or ignorance. If the former, it was certainly very short-sighted; but Don Pablo Pimentel declares that it was done through ignorance, the bark-collectors mistaking the _motosolo_ (C. micrantha) and _carhua-carhua_ (Cascarilla Carua) for the Calisaya bark.[300] The above meagre notices are all that I have been able to glean respecting the history of Caravaya; and I will now give a brief description of the geographical features of this interesting region. The province of Caravaya consists of a narrow strip of lofty table-land, bordering on that of Azangaro; the snowy range of the Eastern Andes for a distance of 120 miles; and the boundless tropical forests to the eastward, stretching away towards the frontier of Brazil. It is bounded on the east and south by Bolivia, on the N.W. by the province of Quispicanchi in the department of Cuzco, on the north and N.E. by the illimitable forests, and on the west by Azangaro.