﻿138 



MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



and San Saba Rivers, recently purchased of the Indians. 

 This particular colony was composed of members of a higher 

 class of intelligence and education than the average and af- 

 forded congenial companionship for the naturalist Lind- 

 heimer. He collected in this region till the fall of 1848, when 

 the inroads of the Indians and the dissensions of the colonists 

 caused the disruption of the society, and he returned to Co- 

 manche Spring, near San Antonio, where his friend, von 

 Meusebach, had located a farm, and here he pursued his 

 botanical work during the season of 1849. 



Lindheimer himself was perfectly fearless of danger in his 

 wide botanical excursions and his immunity from the Indians 

 is largely due to that fact, though he appears to have been 

 held by them in extreme reverence as a ''medicine man," who 

 wandered aimlessly about securing herbs for his decoctions 

 and incantations, and many are the stories told of his ad- 

 ventures with them during these troublous times.* He 

 returned to New Braunfels in the fall of 1849 and his work 

 during the next two years was almost wholly in that vicinity. 

 The collections of these last three years (1849-1851), which 

 have never been distributed or described, are the subject of 

 this paper. After this time Lindheimer never collected plants 

 in quantity and only indulged in his love for botany as a 

 recreation and to build up his own herbarium. 



The German colonization society of Mainz practically 

 ceased operations upon the admission of Texas as one of the 

 states of the Union, and the attempt to found a semi-feudal 

 principality in America failed, as all other such attempts had 

 failed before, but it resulted in giving to Texas a large and 

 industrious German population, which continued to spread 

 and prosper till the need of a newspaper in their own mother- 

 tongue became a necessity and the inhabitants of New Braun- 

 fels proposed a subscription to defray the expenses of securing 

 a press and printing materials to establish one. Early in 

 1852 a mass-meeting of the citizens was held to elect the editor 

 and publisher of the new German organ, and three candidates 



*See "Ein Verbrechen der texanischen Regierung, mit einem Anhang 

 liber die lieistigen Indianer" in Lindheimer's "Aufsfttze und Abhand- 

 lungen." pp. 63-73. 



