The coca is a great favorite of the Quichua Indian; he prizes it as the Chinaman does his opium. While the one puts to sleep, the other keeps awake. The Indian brain being excited by coca, he travels a long distance without feeling fatigue, while he has plenty of coca, he cares little for food. Therefore, after a journey he is worn out. In the city of Cuzco, where the Indians masticate the best quality of coca, they use it to excess. Their physical condition, compared with those who live far off from the coca market, in a climate equally inhospitable, is thin, weak, and sickly; less cheerful, and not so good looking. The chewers also use more brandy and less tambourine and fiddle; seldom dance or sing. Their expression of face is doleful, made hideous by green streaks of juice streaming from each corner of the mouth.
The coca leaf has a very bitter taste to those unaccustomed to it. The Indians chew it with a little slacked lime, which they think eases its way down, and makes it sweeter.
The Incas employed the coca leaf, and it is said introduced it into their church worship. Great attention was paid to its cultivation. They were careful in the choice of land, descending to the eastward of Cuzco, until they found the proper soil and climate.
The Indians have a curious custom with regard to the coca. After the ball in the mouth has lost all its flavor, they throw it against a rock. Along the narrow roads on the Andes, where the rocks stand out in the way, we have noticed their faces besmeared with the coca leaf after it had undergone a thorough mastication.
The men tell me they gather a crop of coca leaves every three months; sometimes the season fluctuates. As soon as the trees are stripped of their leaves, fresh ones sprout out again during the lifetime of the bush, which in the montaña of Cuzco outlives a man.
Among the workmen was a negro, and I never beheld a more cheerful face in any of his race. When he saw us, he grinned till it attracted our attention particularly to him. He was fat and hearty; his black skin had a clear, ebony color, while his teeth were so white and lips so red, it was plain to see he had no partiality for coca. He was excessively polite in getting us seeds from the plant, fetching us water and oranges. We are among fruits and flowers now—a congenial climate for the black man. His wool was curled in most glossy locks and his heels projecting. He was dressed in a white jacket and trousers, straw hat, but without a shirt.