В 1901-м году исследователи культуры и истории Перу были попроще, чем сейчас. То есть исследовали обычно обнюхавшись продукта по самые уши. Классическую библиотечную книгу Голден-Мортимера в хорошем состоянии найти было трудно. То есть страницы у неё бывали сильно обнюханные и облизанные.
Об этой книге смачно пишет другой исследователь кокаина :
De Jussieu Loses His Marbles
YOU KNOW SOMETIMES WHEN YOU meet someone, and somehow,
before they even open their mouth to speak, you know
that you are going to be friends? It's the same with books.
With some books, you see someone reading them on the bus or
in the bookshop or the library and you know that that one - that
one there - is the book you should be reading right at this very
moment. Not a book you ought to read, but a book you have to
read. These books tap you on the shoulder as you go past them
in a shop and you glance at them and you just find yourself
thinking, Well, isn't that interesting? And before you know it
you've just had to buy them and take them home to see what
they are trying so hard to tell you, and the second you start
reading them they grab you by the lapels and won't let go. Books
you reread from the start the moment you have finished them.
Books you wish you could read more slowly but no matter how
hard you try you just can't. Books you buy up in bulk at
Christmas to give to everyone you have ever known, or that you
lend to an old college friend even though you know he reads
books only after running them over with a motorcycle and giving
them to the dog to chew for a couple of months so that if you do
ever get them back the backs will have fallen off, the covers will
be ripped and pages 38 through 46 will be missing. Books that put
you in touch with something real. Books that you get. Books that
get you.
Peru - History of Coca: 'the Divine Plant' of the Incas, by William
Golden Mortimer MD, is not one of these books.
On the contrary, Mortimer does the opposite. Initially you
pick him up and he sucks you in, but after just a short period you
begin to feel unwell and wish you hadn't started - like the
moment in a horror film when you realise that this is actually
quite scary stuff, or the feeling when you reach the top of the hill
on a roller coaster and it tips forward with a clunk and, despite
the fact that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, you
realise that you've made a terrible mistake and that actually
you'd quite like to get off now.
Mortimer does strange things to you. One minute he's telling
you about vocal harmonics in Aida and their improvement with
coca lozenges; the next you find yourself slumped face down on
your desk in the British Library completely disorientated - no
idea where you are, where you've been, or for how long.
Although you eventually recover after lumbering off for a cup of
tea and a piece of cake, it sets you thinking. Do other people have
this problem? Yes. A good 50 per cent of the readers in the library
spend a good 50 per cent of their time talking to themselves: you
can see them in the cafeteria, solitary figures, mouths clamped
tight shut, eyebrows leaping and crashing as they argue their way
through some medieval philosophical treatise or other. Barking
mad, every last one of them. Once you've been in that library for
long enough, weird things began to happen to your mind.
Perhaps spending too long inside makes everyone go a bit loopy.
Perhaps the British Library was built on an old Indian burial
ground (this might explain the clock running so slowly). I told
myself this but I didn't really buy it. Secretly, I knew. I sipped my
tea and I knew. Mortimer was messing with my head.
And so I sat in the library, staring around the room at all the
lucky readers who didn't have to read Mortimer, eventually
settling my attention on the young woman with the hazel eyes in
seat 2242. I wondered who she was. I wondered what she was
reading. I wondered about my ex-girlfriend, who had told me the
week before that, well, she thought I ought to know that she had
started seeing someone else: some computer-programming
buffoon who supported Stoke City, played the guitar, bought her
flowers, earned a zillion times my salary and didn't wander
around in public muttering to himself. What an arsehole. She had
wanted to know whether I had met anyone. I'd tried to think of a
suitably nonchalant reply but nothing came: not only had I not
met anyone, I had hardly spoken to another human being in five
months. I nearly told her about the girl in seat 2242 but I figured
that might be a bit tragic even for me. But how was the book
going? she wanted to know. When was I off to Colombia to
interview drug barons? I looked at my feet and mumbled
something about trepanning.
I had already been through this routine once, with my
publisher. I had felt like an idiot then, too. But the thing was this:
I was five months into my cocaine story and I appeared to be no
closer to either the cartels or the Contras. Where was the glamour?
Where were the drugs? Incas, archaeologists, Columbus - it was
all a bit more long-winded than I had anticipated. So, with my
complete lack of any idea about anything at all, I oafed my way
back to my seat, waited for the girl in seat 2242 to come back from
her coffee break and gazed at her for the rest of the afternoon.
That's what reading Mortimer does for you. It makes you wonder
about things. Most of all, your mortality.
It wasn't long, however, before obscure conquistadors and
chroniclers began to emerge from the book stacks and fall open
to reveal their secrets. These texts constituted my escape route
from coca into cocaine, for only when coca was well documented
would someone actually take note and look at it closely.
Pedro Cieza de Leon was a Spaniard born in the early
sixteenth century who had set out for the New World to make his
fortune at the age of just fourteen. Once there, he had served
under the notorious Sebastian de Belalcazar, a man so brutal in
his treatment of the Indians that his own men had lynched him
and given his body to them to eat because 'he had caused many
Indians to be killed with crossbows and dogs. And God permitted
that he should be sentenced to death in the same place, and have
for his tomb the bellies of Indians.' De Leon had started writing
in 1541 and the first volume of his great work, The Seventeen-Year
Travel of Pedro Cieza de Leon Throughout the Mighty Kingdom of
Peru, emerged twelve years later. It contained news of all sorts of
wonderful produce including potatoes and, more importantly,
coca.
In all parts of the Indies through which I have travelled, I have
observed that the Indians take great delight in having herbs or roots
in their mouths ... In most of the villages subject to the cities of Cali
and Popayan they go about with small coca leaves in their mouths,
to which they apply a mixture, which they carry in a calabash, made
from a certain earth-like lime. Throughout Peru the Indians carry
this coca in their mouths, and from the morning until they lie down
to sleep they never take it out. When I asked some of these Indians
why they carried these leaves in their mouths (which they do not eat
but merely hold between their teeth) they replied that it prevents
them from feeling hungry, and gives them great vigour and strength.
I do believe that it does have some such effect although, perhaps, it
is a custom only suited for people like these Indians.
The Seventeen-Year Travel of Pedro Cieza de Leon XCVI, 1553
Next up was Augustin de Zarate, the royal comptroller under
the first Peruvian viceroy, who, in his 1555 classic, Strange and
Delectable History of the Discovery of Peru, mentioned that coca
was esteemed more than gold or silver, but had no really new
information to offer me. His colleague, Santillan, however,
marked a turnaround: writing just eight years after Zarate, he
was obviously right in there with the ecclesiastical authorities
who were just getting ready to ban coca -
and as such launched the first printed broadside on the herb:
[]
There is in that kingdom (Peru) another type of gain which is the
worst of all and the most harmful to the Indians, that is the coca,
which is a herb like zuzamal. The Indians have it in their mouths
while they work or walk or do any other job, and this is the oldest
habit amongst them, from even before the Incas subjugated them ...
And as it was a precious thing among them, due to that imagination,
all of them began to use it after the Spanish entered in the land ...
which has costed and costs now an infinite number of Indian lives.
Santillan, 1563
Most reports of early coca use, whether pro or con, are pretty
similar, describing the leaves and how the Indians look like
cattle with them in their mouths; giving various names for the
lime compound used to aid the chewing process and relating
the Indian belief that coca gives energy to those who use it. But
Mortimer alerted me to one account in particular: that of
Nicolas Monardes. Monardes, a Spanish physician, had taken it
upon himself to report the arrivals of products from the New
World that were either fantastical (armadillos, for instance) or
might be of use as medicines. Living in Seville, he made sure he
received word of all new arrivals, and in 1577 published his
compilation under the title Joyfulle News out of the New Founde
Worlde. Monardes gave the first really accurate account of coca
cultivation and this version is generally cited as the first real
botanical reference to coca. Luckily there was a copy of the
1596 translation in the library. I found coca in the third book,
snappily titled:
The Third Parte of the Medicinall Historie Whiche
Doth Treate of the Thinges that are Brought from our Occidental
Indias, which Doeth Serve for the Use of Medicine - Where is Put
Many Thinges Medicinall, That Hath Greate Secretes and Venues.
Clearly coca had acquired some reputation by this point
because Monardes opens by commenting that he had long
wanted to get his hands on some, having heard so much about
it. But what else did he have to say?
"Thei take Cokles or Oisters, in their shelles, and they doe burne
them and grinde them, and after they are burned they remaine like
Lime, eerie small grounde, and they take the leves of the Coca, and
they chawe them in their Mouthes, and as they goe champing, they
goe mingling with it of that pouder made of the shelles in suche
sorte, that they make it like to a Paste, taking Jesse of the pouder
than of the Hearbe, and of this Paste they make certaine smalle
Bawles rounde, and they put them to drie, and when they will use of
them, they take a little Ball in their mouthe, and they chawe hym:
passing hym from one parte to an other, procuring to conserve hym
all that they can, and that beyng doen, they doe retourne to take an
other, and so they goe, using of it all the tyme that they have needed,
whiche is when they travaill by the waie and especially if it be by
waies where is no meate, or lacke of water. For the use of these
Bawles dooe the the hunger and thurste from them, and they say
that they do receive substaunce, as though that they did eate."
Joyfulle News ..., Monardes, 1577
I couldn't really see why everyone quoted this as a classic text
when it just seemed to reiterate what other people had been
saying for eighty-odd years. His spelling was also atrocious: how
could he spell the word 'receive' and not manage 'they'? My
spellchecker nearly exploded. Like some cutesy-retro hotel
chain, he used the word 'ye' a lot and virtually every word he
wrote he ended in V. It all felt rather twee. I reminded myself
that it probably could not qualify as 'twee' if it was genuine and
pressed on. Generally, the later the writings were the more
interesting they became, as they began to ask not simply what
coca was, but what its effects were and whether they were real.
The argument over whether coca's invigorating effects were
illusory were to rage for the next three hundred years. Was there
perhaps something in this bizarre habit after all? Acosta (1590)
clearly thought there was:
"They say it gives them courage and is very pleasing to them. Many
grave men hold this as a superstition and a mere imagination. For
my part, and to speak the truth, I persuade not myself that it is an
imagination, but contrawise I think it works and gives force and
courage to the Indians, so as to go some days without meat, but only
a handful of coca, and other like effects."
Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 1590
What is interesting about Acosta is not simply that he was a
high-ranking official willing to go on the record stating that coca's
effects were real but that he was willing to do it as a Jesuit. At this
point, according to the clergy, coca was an 'iliusio del demono'.
Twenty-six years later the Inquisition, which narrowly missed
Peru but passed through Mexico, became so concerned about the
native Indians' practice of drug taking that a proclamation was
issued against it. Yet Acosta quite clearly approved of coca;
perhaps his visits to the mines at Potosi had convinced him. He
wasn't infallible, however. In the same volume he writes of a
despicable Peruvian drink adored by the locals but which was
'loathsome ... having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant to
taste ...' This loathsome drink was none other than hot chocolate.
Despite a number of advocates, old superstitions about coca
lingered on, and nowhere more so than in the Church. Over a
century after coca was taxed by the clergy, we still find reports of
its satanic influences, and it is just such reports that, blindly
cited by later commentators, would help to propagate the myth
of coca chewing as a dangerous, addictive habit - a myth that
survives to this day.
"I wish to declare the unhappiness and great evil that, among so
many felicities, this kingdom of Peru experiences in possessing the
coca herb (which is taken by those ministers of the Devil for their
abominable vices and execrable evil-doing) ... Would that our lord
the King had ordered this noxious herb pulled up by the roots
wherever it is found, not permitting even the memory of it to
remain; Great good would follow were it to be extirpated from this
realm: the Devil would be bereft of the great harvest of souls he
reaps, God would be done a great service, and vast numbers of men
and women would not perish."
Arzan, 1674
While Spanish commentators and priests debated the relative
merits of coca, another school of thinkers concerned itself with a
more pressing issue: what was coca? Botany was taking great
leaps forward and plant classification in the modern sense was
just about to start. Where did coca fit into all this? Mortimer told
me that the first attempt at classification was in Plukenetius.
While I had no idea what 'in Plukenetius' meant, I found out
soon enough: Leonard Plukenet, compiler of the great
seventeenth-century botanical work, Phytographia. On the off
chance that there might be a recent
Peru - History of Coca: 'the Divine Plant' of the Incas, by William
Golden Mortimer MD, is not one of these books.
On the contrary, Mortimer does the opposite. Initially you
pick him up and he sucks you in, but after just a short period you
begin to feel unwell and wish you hadn't started - like the
moment in a horror film when you realise that this is actually
quite scary stuff, or the feeling when you reach the top of the hill
on a roller coaster and it tips forward with a clunk and, despite
the fact that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, you
realise that you've made a terrible mistake and that actually
you'd quite like to get off now.
Mortimer does strange things to you. One minute he's telling
you about vocal harmonics in Aida and their improvement with
coca lozenges; the next you find yourself slumped face down on
your desk in the British Library completely disorientated - no
idea where you are, where you've been, or for how long.
Although you eventually recover after lumbering off for a cup of
tea and a piece of cake, it sets you thinking. Do other people have
this problem? Yes. A good 50 per cent of the readers in the library
spend a good 50 per cent of their time talking to themselves: you
can see them in the cafeteria, solitary figures, mouths clamped
tight shut, eyebrows leaping and crashing as they argue their way
through some medieval philosophical treatise or other. Barking
mad, every last one of them. Once you've been in that library for
long enough, weird things began to happen to your mind.
Perhaps spending too long inside makes everyone go a bit loopy.
Perhaps the British Library was built on an old Indian burial
ground (this might explain the clock running so slowly). I told
myself this but I didn't really buy it. Secretly, I knew. I sipped my
tea and I knew. Mortimer was messing with my head.
And so I sat in the library, staring around the room at all the
lucky readers who didn't have to read Mortimer, eventually
settling my attention on the young woman with the hazel eyes in
seat 2242. I wondered who she was. I wondered what she was
reading. I wondered about my ex-girlfriend, who had told me the
week before that, well, she thought I ought to know that she had
started seeing someone else: some computer-programming
buffoon who supported Stoke City, played the guitar, bought her
flowers, earned a zillion times my salary and didn't wander
around in public muttering to himself. What an arsehole. She had
wanted to know whether I had met anyone. I'd tried to think of a
suitably nonchalant reply but nothing came: not only had I not
met anyone, I had hardly spoken to another human being in five
months. I nearly told her about the girl in seat 2242 but I figured
that might be a bit tragic even for me. But how was the book
going? she wanted to know. When was I off to Colombia to
interview drug barons? I looked at my feet and mumbled
something about trepanning.
I had already been through this routine once, with my
publisher. I had felt like an idiot then, too. But the thing was this:
I was five months into my cocaine story and I appeared to be no
closer to either the cartels or the Contras. Where was the glamour?
Where were the drugs? Incas, archaeologists, Columbus - it was
all a bit more long-winded than I had anticipated. So, with my
complete lack of any idea about anything at all, I oafed my way
back to my seat, waited for the girl in seat 2242 to come back from
her coffee break and gazed at her for the rest of the afternoon.
That's what reading Mortimer does for you. It makes you wonder
about things. Most of all, your mortality.
It wasn't long, however, before obscure conquistadors and
chroniclers began to emerge from the book stacks and fall open
to reveal their secrets. These texts constituted my escape route
from coca into cocaine, for only when coca was well documented
would someone actually take note and look at it closely.
Pedro Cieza de Leon was a Spaniard born in the early
sixteenth century who had set out for the New World to make his
fortune at the age of just fourteen. Once there, he had served
under the notorious Sebastian de Belalcazar, a man so brutal in
his treatment of the Indians that his own men had lynched him
and given his body to them to eat because 'he had caused many
Indians to be killed with crossbows and dogs. And God permitted
that he should be sentenced to death in the same place, and have
for his tomb the bellies of Indians.' De Leon had started writing
in 1541 and the first volume of his great work, The Seventeen-Year
Travel of Pedro Cieza de Leon Throughout the Mighty Kingdom of
Peru, emerged twelve years later. It contained news of all sorts of
wonderful produce including potatoes and, more importantly,
coca.
In all parts of the Indies through which I have travelled, I have
observed that the Indians take great delight in having herbs or roots
in their mouths ... In most of the villages subject to the cities of Cali
and Popayan they go about with small coca leaves in their mouths,
to which they apply a mixture, which they carry in a calabash, made
from a certain earth-like lime. Throughout Peru the Indians carry
this coca in their mouths, and from the morning until they lie down
to sleep they never take it out. When I asked some of these Indians
why they carried these leaves in their mouths (which they do not eat
but merely hold between their teeth) they replied that it prevents
them from feeling hungry, and gives them great vigour and strength.
I do believe that it does have some such effect although, perhaps, it
is a custom only suited for people like these Indians.
The Seventeen-Year Travel of Pedro Cieza de Leon XCVI, 1553
Next up was Augustin de Zarate, the royal comptroller under
the first Peruvian viceroy, who, in his 1555 classic, Strange and
Delectable History of the Discovery of Peru, mentioned that coca
was esteemed more than gold or silver, but had no really new
information to offer me. His colleague, Santillan, however,
marked a turnaround: writing just eight years after Zarate, he
was obviously right in there with the ecclesiastical authorities who
were just getting ready to ban coca - and as such launched
the first printed broadside on the herb:
There is in that kingdom (Peru) another type of gain which is the
worst of all and the most harmful to the Indians, that is the coca,
which is a herb like zuzamal. The Indians have it in their mouths
while they work or walk or do any other job, and this is the oldest
habit amongst them, from even before the Incas subjugated them ...
And as it was a precious thing among them, due to that imagination,
all of them began to use it after the Spanish entered in the land ...
which has costed and costs now an infinite number of Indian lives.
Santillan, 1563
Most reports of early coca use, whether pro or con, are pretty
similar, describing the leaves and how the Indians look like
cattle with them in their mouths; giving various names for the
lime compound used to aid the chewing process and relating
the Indian belief that coca gives energy to those who use it. But
Mortimer alerted me to one account in particular: that of
Nicolas Monardes. Monardes, a Spanish physician, had taken it
upon himself to report the arrivals of products from the New
World that were either fantastical (armadillos, for instance) or
might be of use as medicines. Living in Seville, he made sure he
received word of all new arrivals, and in 1577 published his
compilation under the title Joyfulle News out of the New Founde
Worlde. Monardes gave the first really accurate account of coca
cultivation and this version is generally cited as the first real
botanical reference to coca. Luckily there was a copy of the
1596 translation in the library. I found coca in the third book,
snappily titled: The Third Parte of the Medicinall Historie Whiche
Doth Treate of the Thinges that are Brought from our Occidental
Indias, which Doeth Serve for the Use of Medicine - Where is Put
Many Thinges Medicinall, That Hath Greate Secretes and Venues.
Clearly coca had acquired some reputation by this point
because Monardes opens by commenting that he had long
wanted to get his hands on some, having heard so much about
it. But what else did he have to say?
"Thei take Cokles or Oisters, in their shelles, and they doe burne
them and grinde them, and after they are burned they remaine like
Lime, eerie small grounde, and they take the leves of the Coca, and
they chawe them in their Mouthes, and as they goe champing, they
goe mingling with it of that pouder made of the shelles in suche
sorte, that they make it like to a Paste, taking Jesse of the pouder
than of the Hearbe, and of this Paste they make certaine smalle
Bawles rounde, and they put them to drie, and when they will use of
them, they take a little Ball in their mouthe, and they chawe hym:
passing hym from one parte to an other, procuring to conserve hym
all that they can, and that beyng doen, they doe retourne to take an
other, and so they goe, using of it all the tyme that they have needed,
whiche is when they travaill by the waie and especially if it be by
waies where is no meate, or lacke of water. For the use of these
Bawles dooe the the hunger and thurste from them, and they say
that they do receive substaunce, as though that they did eate."
Joyfulle News ..., Monardes, 1577
I couldn't really see why everyone quoted this as a classic text
when it just seemed to reiterate what other people had been
saying for eighty-odd years. His spelling was also atrocious: how
could he spell the word 'receive' and not manage 'they'? My
spellchecker nearly exploded. Like some cutesy-retro hotel
chain, he used the word 'ye' a lot and virtually every word he
wrote he ended in V. It all felt rather twee. I reminded myself
that it probably could not qualify as 'twee' if it was genuine and
pressed on. Generally, the later the writings were the more
interesting they became, as they began to ask not simply what
coca was, but what its effects were and whether they were real.
The argument over whether coca's invigorating effects were
illusory were to rage for the next three hundred years. Was there
perhaps something in this bizarre habit after all? Acosta (1590)
clearly thought there was:
"They say it gives them courage and is very pleasing to them. Many
grave men hold this as a superstition and a mere imagination. For
my part, and to speak the truth, I persuade not myself that it is an
imagination, but contrawise I think it works and gives force and
courage to the Indians, so as to go some days without meat, but only
a handful of coca, and other like effects."
Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 1590
What is interesting about Acosta is not simply that he was a
high-ranking official willing to go on the record stating that coca's
effects were real but that he was willing to do it as a Jesuit. At this
point, according to the clergy, coca was an 'iliusio del demono'.
Twenty-six years later the Inquisition, which narrowly missed
Peru but passed through Mexico, became so concerned about the
native Indians' practice of drug taking that a proclamation was
issued against it. Yet Acosta quite clearly approved of coca;
perhaps his visits to the mines at Potosi had convinced him. He
wasn't infallible, however. In the same volume he writes of a
despicable Peruvian drink adored by the locals but which was
'loathsome ... having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant to
taste ...' This loathsome drink was none other than hot chocolate.
Despite a number of advocates, old superstitions about coca
lingered on, and nowhere more so than in the Church. Over a
century after coca was taxed by the clergy, we still find reports of
its satanic influences, and it is just such reports that, blindly
cited by later commentators, would help to propagate the myth
of coca chewing as a dangerous, addictive habit - a myth that
survives to this day.
I wish to declare the unhappiness and great evil that, among so
many felicities, this kingdom of Peru experiences in possessing the
coca herb (which is taken by those ministers of the Devil for their
abominable vices and execrable evil-doing) ... Would that our lord
the King had ordered this noxious herb pulled up by the roots
wherever it is found, not permitting even the memory of it to
remain; Great good would follow were it to be extirpated from this
realm: the Devil would be bereft of the great harvest of souls he
reaps, God would be done a great service, and vast numbers of men
and women would not perish.
Arzan, 1674
While Spanish commentators and priests debated the relative
merits of coca, another school of thinkers concerned itself with a
more pressing issue: what was coca? Botany was taking great
leaps forward and plant classification in the modern sense was
just about to start. Where did coca fit into all this? Mortimer told
me that the first attempt at classification was in Plukenetius.
While I had no idea what 'in Plukenetius' meant, I found out
soon enough: Leonard Plukenet, compiler of the great
seventeenth-century botanical work, Phytographia. On the off
chance that there might be a recent translation or reissue, I
typed 'Plukenetius' into the library's computer search and it
came up immediately: a first edition, dated 1692. You had to
hand it to the British Library: it may have cost too much and
taken too long to build and their bloody clock ran slow - but it
certainly had a lot of obscure books. When Phytographia actually
arrived, I found the page, and there it was:
"Coca Peruiana Hernandez apud Recc.302. Arbusta pro Numinibus
habita, Mamacocae vocata (hoc est) Matres Coca 1 Deae Cocae
Nieremberg fol 304 - tab 339."
Phytographia, 1692
What on earth was Plukenet going on about? I reread it a
couple of times but was still none the wiser. The text, later
deciphered for me by someone who actually knew what they
were talking about, said that the plant was known in Peru as
'mama coca', and it had taken its name from that: coca. I had half
the name. I had 'coca'. If Mortimer was to be believed, the first
botanical classification as Erythroxylum came sixty years later,
in Natural History of Jamaica, a botanical anthology compiled by
Dr Patrick Browne in 1756. What was coca doing in Jamaica in 1756?
I had no idea but, once again, there it was on the screen:
'shelfmark X219 4765, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Press "F4" to
order'. Back to the Rare Books Reading Room I went.
Browne's Natural History of Jamaica, when it eventually
arrived, was so dilapidated that it came in a box. But that doesn't
quite do it justice: Natural History of Jamaica came in a box the
same way a corpse comes in a coffin. It was large - about twice
the size of an encyclopedia - and deceptively heavy, and the
librarian had dropped it on to himself when he took it down for
me. 'I've just dropped your box on to myself,' he told me,
deadpan, as he slid it over the issues counter. I apologised,
cradled it in my arms and carried it back to my desk. Opening
the box, I found that it might as well have been a coffin: inside,
the book was in pieces, with a broken spine and a powdery cover
that left red smudges on my fingers when I touched it. There was
a strong reek of old people's homes about it.
Natural History of Jamaica was 500-odd pages long, a foot and a
half tall, and completely shredded. Inside were a lot of pictures
of Jamaican plants and a large dead spider, which rather took me
by surprise. Unlike Plukenetius - which was considerably older
but had been restored - Natural History really looked its age. And
it was old: George II had been king when it was published and
the American Revolution was still twenty years in the future.
Natural History of Jamaica had been lodged in the vaults of the
British Library for nearly sixty years by the time Napoleon
invaded Russia.
Holy macaroni!
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