68 Naturalist at Large 



come riding their well-trained bulls laden with heavy packs 

 to go to market in little towns like Santa Barbara de 

 Samana — quaint little Old World towns that date back 

 almost to the time of Columbus. 



The other side of the Gulf offers a complete contrast, 

 for long ago this must have been a flat limestone plain 

 which has been cut and eroded away to form a labyrinth 

 of little rocky islands, each one deeply undercut by the 

 surf, the rocks dripping with orchids and begonias and 

 great elephant-eared aroids, and beset with tall slender 

 palms. Their little stalks are strong as a long iron bar 

 would be, for these palms are old and have stood against 

 countless hurricanes. There are many caves in these little 

 islands, in some of which fishermen live in primitive sim- 

 plicity — a fairyland, if ever there was one. 



In 1908 I went as a delegate to the first Pan American 

 Scientific Congress, held at Santiago, in Chile. Because it 

 was more convenient in those days, we went to Europe 

 and sailed from Lisbon to Brazil. Then we visited Monte- 

 video and Buenos Aires. A theft of jewelry from my wife, 

 which required us to return to Mendoza to testify, pre- 

 vented us from crossing the Andes with the American 

 delegation to the Congress. I had not expected that this 

 South American journey would afford many zoological 

 high lights, for it had a political background, but this delay 

 provided a few which I should like to record. 



Everyone deplored the fact that we could not travel 

 straight through from Buenos Aires to Santiago. The rail- 

 road, however, was not yet completed. We went by night 

 from Buenos Aires to Mendoza on the very comfortable 



