914 CYRUS GUERNSEY PRINGLE. 



consequence he frequently slept in the open and subsisted on the 

 simplest kinds of food, which he could bring with him, as for instance 

 crackers and Vermont cheese. He early suffered from tropical fevers, 

 treated his disorders himself, sometimes with heroic doses of powerful 

 medicines, and after a few years seems to have acquired a certain 

 immunity from malarial diseases. 



On these trips he took with him, one or two at a time, no less than 

 thirty-one assistants. Nearly all of them suffered from fevers, and 

 he nursed them tenderly and brought them all safely back to their 

 homes. In selecting these assistants, he tlid not seek men of scientific 

 attainments but chiefly husky young men from farms and lumber 

 camps, who could help him in the manual labor of collecting and 

 drying plants under his direction and especially in transporting heavy 

 presses and other equipment often for many miles. Incidentally, it 

 was in certain regions the duty of the assistant to carry somewhat 

 obviously in his belt or hip-pocket a large cavalry revolver. This 

 seems to have been strictly for moral effect, and so far as has been 

 learned it was never employed otherwise. Indeed, there is a suspicion 

 that it was not always loaded. 



Happily, Pringle was able to establish exceedingly helpful relations 

 of enduring friendship with several of the high officials in the govern- 

 ment of Diaz. These gentlemen, some of them connected with the 

 department of public health, were of great assistance in many ways, 

 particularly in sending him from time to time telegraphic reports of 

 the distribution of epidemic diseases in the republic, thus enabling him 

 to avoid infected districts, a precaution of undoubted importance to 

 which may have been due his success in escaping during a long series 

 of years the more dangerous of the tropical diseases. 



Pringle's first collecting in Mexico was in the northwestern states of 

 Sonora and Chihuahua, a natural extension of his work previously 

 done in Arizona. P'or some years thereafter he devoted his chief 

 attention to the states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, and Jalisco, then to 

 San Luis Potosi, particularly to the diversified and botanically rich 

 southern extremity of that state, a region not penetrated by Schaffner, 

 Parry & Palmer, or others who had previously done notable explora- 

 tion farther north in the same state. From about 1890 Pringle 

 devoted himself largely to southern Mexico, working with considerable 

 thoroughness over Michoacan, the State of Mexico, the Federal 

 District, Morelos and Puebla. Then with great enthusiasm he 

 continued his labors in Oaxaca, "the garden state," most wonderful 

 of all. 



