312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



boldt unfortunately was forced to make the latter part of his South 

 American explorations (the years 1799 to 1803 were spent in South 

 America) more hurriedly than the earlier portion of his journey so 

 that he wrote much of this account after his return to Europe. More- 

 over, Von Thielmann, recounting his own journey over the Quindio, 

 states in a footnote (p. 366) that Humboldt's illustration in Vues des 

 Cordilleres of the entrance to the trail at Ibague must have been done 

 by him "from memory since it by no means corresponds to the actual 

 conditions." Be that as it may, Humboldt did see the Quindio wax 

 palm in all its majesty, and the credit for its discovery cannot be taken 

 away from him in spite of the confusion in his descriptions and 

 drawings of it. 



However, it is fortunate that there are several accounts, particularly 

 in the writings of Andre, Karsten, and Von Thielmann, which throw 

 considerable light upon the character of the wax palm of the eastern 

 slope. Eduard Andre tells of his crossing of the Quindio in March 

 1876 in a series of articles on his travels in equatorial South America 

 (L'Amerique Equinoxiale, 1878-79), published in a well-known illus- 

 trated magazine, Le Tour du Monde. Andre was an able botanist, for 

 many years editor of L'lllustration Horticole and a contributor of 

 papers on various botanical subjects. He was well acquainted with 

 Humboldt's work and crossed the trail in the same direction and over 

 the exact route that Humboldt took, that is, from Ibague to Cartago 

 Andre writes most entertainingly. He describes the trail and his ex- 

 periences — cargueros were no longer used in 1876 — he tells of the peo- 

 ple he met and discusses the types of vegetation, especially with refer- 

 ence to the changes in altitude. He describes the bamboos, the oaks, 

 and cinchonas, various palms and ferns, and, most important of all, 

 for us, the wax palms. He compares his own observations with those 

 of Humboldt practically every step of the way but, even at that, had 

 it not been for the fact that he arose too early one morning for a hunt- 

 ing expedition, we might just possibly be without his accurate observa- 

 tions concerning the magnificent wax palm on the eastern side of the 

 pass and his statements regarding the one of the western slope. 

 Andre is the first traveler, as far as I have been able to discover, 

 who definitely stated from actual experience that two kinds of wax 

 palms occur on the two slopes of the pass. Moreover, Andre actually 

 chopped down two of the taller palms on the eastern side and not 

 only measured them but collected botanical specimens as well. 



Andre had been told that the journey would take 7 days; it took 

 10. During the 75 years that had elapsed since Humboldt crossed 

 the trail, a few huts, a sulphur mine, and other localities marked 

 definite stopping-places along the route, all of which Andre set 

 down in his maps (fig. 2). Approaching Pie de San Juan, Andre 



