*33
[Footnote 30: Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 25.]
[Footnote 31: The pungent leaf of the betel was in like manner
mixed with lime when chewed. (Elphinstone, History of India,
London, 1841, vol. I. p. 331.) The similarity of this social
indulgence, in the remote East and West, is singular.]
[Footnote 32: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms. - Acosta, lib. 4, cap.
22. - Stevenson, Residence in S. America, vol. II. p. 63. - Cieza
de Leon, Cronica, cap. 96.]
[Footnote 33: A traveller (Poeppig) noticed in the Foreign
Quarterly Review, (No. 33,) expatiates on the malignant effects
of the habitual use of the cuca, as very similar to those
produced on the chewer of opium. Strange that such baneful
properties should not be the subject of more frequent comment
with other writers! I do not remember to have seen them even
adverted to.]
Higher up on the slopes of the Cordilleras, beyond the limits of
the maize and of the quinoa, - a grain bearing some resemblance
to rice, and largely cultivated by the Indians, - was to be found
the potato, the introduction of which into Europe has made an era
in the history of agriculture. Whether indigenous to Peru, or
imported from the neighbouring country of Chili, it formed the
great staple of the more elevated plains, under the Incas, and
its culture was continued to a height in the equatorial regions
which reached many thousand feet above the limits of perpetual
snow in the temperate latitudes of Europe.
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