2 2 8 MAGUIRE 



Bonpland, the botanist of the expedition for the ensuing five years. From 

 Cumana and Caracas explorations were made in northern Venezuela until 

 the party on March 27, 1800, arrived at San Fernando de Apure, some miles 

 up the river from its junction with the Orinoco. From there the explorers 

 pressed up the Orinoco River to the town of San Fernando on the Atabapo, 

 near the confluence of that river with the Orinoco. Along the common com- 

 mercial route of the time to the upper Rio Negro, they traveled up the Rio 

 Atabapo to Yavita, across the short pleasant portage to Pimichin, and thence 

 on the Rio Guainia to the point where its union with the Casiquiare marks 

 the beginning of the Rio Negro. The Humboldt party proceeded up the Rio 

 Casiquiare back into the Rio Orinoco, and thence on to the savannas of 

 Esmeralda, lying at the foot of the majestic sandstone mountain of Duida, 

 on May 21, 1800. There Bonpland made the first botanical collections from a 

 region that since has become legendary in its botanical interest, and there 

 Humboldt became the first European to witness the preparation of curare. 

 On November 24, 1800, Humboldt and Bonpland sailed from Nueva Barce- 

 lona for Cuba, thus completing a visit of some sixteen months, during which 

 time Bonpland had collected the great mass of Venezuelan material that was 

 to become in large part the subject of C. S. Kunth's report in the seven- 

 volume Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, 1815-1825, one of the most 

 important writings on the early botany of America. 



Subsequent to the historic expedition of von Humboldt and Bonpland, dur- 

 ing the nineteenth century there followed a number of resident botanists and 

 visitors who collected variously in the country. A few of the more prominent 

 were J. M. Vargas; J. W. K. Moritz, who collected at Colonia Tovar in the 

 region of Caracas and in the Andes of Merida and Trujillo; Robert and 

 Richard Schomburgk (1838-1842), who collected in the Gran Sabana re- 

 gion; J. J. Linden in 1844; L. J. Schlim and N. Funk in 1845; Hermann 

 Karsten in 1843, when he visited the states of Carabobo and Miranda, re- 

 turning in 1847 and finally in 1852 to continue with his principal work in 

 Colombia; August Fendler, who earlier made botanical collections in New 

 Mexico, Panama, and Trinidad, came to Venezuela in 1853 and established 

 himself at Colonia Tovar; Richard Spruce, who from January, 1852, until 

 November, 1854, collected in large series 1813 numbers of vascular plants in 

 the Rio Negro and Alto Orinoco basins. Field activities of the 1800's came 

 to a close in Venezuela with the visit of H. H. Rusby and Roy W. Squires 

 to the lower Orinoco in 1896. The first set of their collection of 444 numbers 

 is deposited at The New York Botanical Garden. 



Henri Pittier, whose thirty years of botanical activity in Venezuela ended 

 at the mid-century, dominated the botany of that country in our time. By 

 1918 he had accumulated 5000 collection numbers, the principal sets of which 

 are deposited at Caracas and Washington. He founded the National Herbar- 

 ium and as a result of his own efforts built the collections to 30,000 specimens. 



