"John of the Fountain" had provided plenty of soil, and by the 3rd all the plants were established in the Wardian cases by Mr. Weir. But the difficulties of getting the plants out of the country were not entirely ended by my escape from Martel and the _Juntas Municipales_ of the interior. The Superintendent of the custom-house of Islay declared it to be illegal to export cascarilla-plants, and refused to allow them to be shipped without an express order from the Minister of Finance and Commerce at Lima. He had probably received intelligence respecting the contents of the cases from Vilque, where all news centres at the time of the fair. This obliged me to go to Lima to obtain the necessary order from Colonel Salcedo, the Minister of Finance, which, after much difficulty, I succeeded in doing, and returned with it to Islay on June 23rd.[350] Meanwhile, since the plants had been established in the Wardian cases, they had begun to bud and throw out young leaves, which seemed to prove that they had quite recovered from their journey across the arctic climate of the Andes. In the evening of the 23rd the cases were hoisted into a launch, ready to go on board the steamer on the following morning; and during the night attempts were made to bribe the man in charge to bore holes and kill the plants by pouring in boiling water, but without success. On the following day they were safely lodged on board the steamer bound for Panama. It was impossible not to feel regret that H. M. steamer 'Vixen,' then lying idle at Callao, had not been ordered to take the plants direct across the Pacific to Madras, when a majority would have arrived in perfect order. But this was not to be, and we had to look forward to long voyages, several trans-shipments, and the intense heat of the Red Sea, before this most valuable collection of plants could reach their destination in Southern India. Yet it could not but be satisfactory to look back upon the extraordinary difficulties we had overcome, the hardships and dangers of the forests, the scarcity of the plants, the bewildering puzzle to find them amidst the dense underwood, the endeavour to stop my journey first at Tambopata and then in Sandia, the rapid flight across unknown parts of the cordillera, and the attempts first to stop and then to destroy the plants at Islay: it was a source of gratification to look back upon all this, and then to see the great majority of the plants budding and looking healthy in the Wardian cases. The climate at Islay, during the time that the plants remained there, was as follows, from the 1st to the 24th of June:-- Mean temperature 69° Fahr. Mean minimum at night 60 Highest temperature observed 73 Lowest 58 Entire range 15