Early Months of 1856
Early months – Sam began to itch to go to South America after reading an account of coca and the money that might be made harvesting the plant and distributing it in the U.S. [Powers, Dangerous 241]. In 1910, in “The Turning Point of My Life,” Sam remembered a two-volume work on the exploration of the Amazon, that it “told an astonishing tale about coca, a vegetable product of miraculous powers…” [MTL 1: 68n7].