Hartley Neita, Contributor
IT was over 20 years ago, but as I told you last week, the memory of that first time remained with me as if it was yesterday. Not only did I want to return there, but I even tried once in a Lada station wagon.
So when my daughter invited me to join her in a party of the family of her school friend Lawayne Wilson-Jefferson, German engineer Peter Kolbusch, and their children and a nephew, I joined them. Eagerly.
We climbed the hill through Gordon Town and Mavis Bank in two four-wheeler vehicles along a winding track which became narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper, with deep water channels trenching the road. On either side there were precipices and the feeling was that a slip over the edge would have ended us somewhere 5,000 feet below.
Two hours after leaving Papine we arrived at Cinchona. This mountain beauty spot is probably Jamaica's best kept secret, and its history, which has its roots in Peru in South America, is a fascinating one.
When the Europeans first came to this side of the world one of the dangers they faced was malaria. Now in Peru, the Indians had discovered the cure for this fever in the bark of a tree. The Jesuit priests learned of this cure and in due course they named it "Jesuit Bark". Some time later, the wife of the Governor, the Countess of Cinchon, was stricken with the fever and they cured her. And she being of noble blood they named it after her, hence Cinchona.
In the mid-19th century, the Government introduced the plant through seeds to Jamaica. By October 1961 there were some 400 healthy seedlings. They were first tried at Bath in St. Thomas, but it was soon realised that they would only flourish in a cooler climate.
They were then tried out at the Cold Spring coffee plantation in St. Andrew at an elevation of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. According to the curator, one Nathaniel Wilson, he found "the climate and soil to be all he could desire and as it afforded every facility for carrying out so valuable an experiment" he planted the seedlings, on November 16, 1861, then about two and two and a half inches in height, among the coffee plants.
Blooming business
Twelve months later, the plants with their red bark was 44 inches tall with leaves measuring 13 inches long by eight inches broad. By December 1863 the plants were six feet tall, with an average of 10 branches, and a circumference of stem at base of four inches.
Export of the cinchona bark in the year 1884 was 73,533 pounds. The last export was in 1866, after which competition from India made it uneconomical.
The trees remained, however, and in addition exotic plants and flowers from all over the world were introduced, to create a botanical garden.
And so today we have Hope in St. Andrew, Bath in St. Thomas and the Castleton Botanical Gardens in St. Mary. Once upon a time, too, there were the Hinton East Garden in Gordon Town, St. Andrew, and another for a few years at Irwin in St. James.
Next week: "Cinchona Today".
