1^6 Bangs, The Hummingbirds of Colombia. [-April 



For the first three months he worked in the vicinity of Santa 

 Marta, collecting in the hot country and on some of the smaller 

 •mountains up to an elevation of 6000 feet. In March he left 

 Santa Marta and travelled along the coast in an Indian dugout 

 ■to Rio Hacha, from where roads lead in several directions into 

 the higher mountains. Here he hired a pack mule, and taking 

 along as a companion a shipwrecked sailor, started on foot up 

 one of the mountain trails. After an arduous journey of several 

 days he arrived at the Indian village of Pueblo Viejo, at about 

 8000 feet altitude. This was his first collecting ground in the 

 higher sierra. Later he visited Macotama, 8000 feet, San 

 Miguel, 7500 feet, San Franscisco, 6000 feet, and Palomina, 

 5000 feet, making collections at all these places, but on this trip 

 got no higher than 8000 feet. 



Travelling in the Sierra Nevada is at best slow and laborious 

 and in the rainy season is harder still. Mr. Brown, in order to 

 go as light as possible, carried no tent with him, and cut down 

 his outfit in other ways till much too small for his comfort. Night 

 after night he slept out with no shelter, wet to the skin by the 

 terrific thunder storms that rage in these mountains nearly 

 continuously throughout the spring. His one pair of shoes was 

 soon worn out by the rough travelling, and for the greater part 

 of the trip he went barefoot, his feet and legs exposed to the 

 attacks of wood ticks and numerous insects, with every now and 

 then a narrow escape from a fer-de-lance or a bushmaster. 



Many of the trails are fairly good, being used by the Indians, 

 but occasionally Mr. Brown had to cut his way through the forest, 

 and the mountain streams, swollen by the continuous rains to 

 raging torrents, were often very hard to ford. Under these 

 conditions Mr. Brown made a very creditable collection, sending 

 in over a thousand bird skins and about three hundred and fifty 

 mammals as the results of his six and a half months work. 



The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, with its highest peaks 

 rising to 17,500 feet above sea level, forms an immense isolated 

 mountain mass cut off from the other mountain ranges of north- 

 ern South America by deep tropical valleys. In the hot, dry 

 lowlands about Santa Marta the forest is stunted and brushy, 

 but as one ascends the mountains the growth becomes more 



