Article: In search of the fever tree: Mark Honigsbaum follows the trail of Richard Spruce, one of hunters, who set off into the forests of Ecuador in 1860 roja or red bark tree -- the cure then, as it is now, for malaria. (In The Footsteps)(Cover Story).

IT IS JUST 48 KILOMETRES as the condor flies from the summit of Chimborazo to the cloud forests nestled in the foothills of the extinct volcano, but the descents are among the most dramatic in the Andes. From the rim of the glacier at 5,800 metres you plunge through freezing clouds and treacherous bogs to emerge on a bleak, wind-chafed tundra -- the arenal. On the arenal the ground is flat and the going easier, but it doesn't last. Soon you arrive at the Ensillada -- `the saddleback' -- a craggy ridge on the western shoulder of Chimborazo from where you must plunge down again into a verdant bowl-shaped valley and up the other side to another ridge.

Now you are ...

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