138 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
and San Saba Rivers, recently purchased of the Indians. 
This particular colony was composed of members of a higher 
class of intelligence and education than the average and af- 
forded congenial companionship for the naturalist Lind- 
-heimer. He collected in this region till the fall of 1848, when 
‘the inroads of the Indians and the dissensions of the colonists 
caused the disruption of the society, and he returned to Co- 
manche Spring, near San Antonio, where his friend, von 
Meusebach, had located a farm, and here he pursued his 
botanical work during the season of 1849, 
Lindheimer himself was perfectly fearless of danger in his 
wide botanical excursions and his immunity from the Indians 
is largely due to that fact, though he appears to have been 
held by them in extreme reverence as a “medicine man,’’ who 
wandered aimlessly about securing herbs for his decoctions 
and incantations, and many are the stories told of his ad- 
ventures with them during these troublous times.* He 
returned to New Braunfels in the fall of 1849 and his work 
during the next two years was almost wholly in that vicinity. 
The collections of these last three years (1849-1851), which 
have never been distributed or described, are the subject of 
this paper. After this time Lindheimer never collected plants 
in quantity and only indulged in his love for botany as a 
recreation and to build up his own herbarium 
The German colonization society of Mainz practically 
ceased operations upon the admission of Texas as one of the 
states of the Union, and the attempt to found a semi-feudal 
principality in America failed, as all other such attempts had 
failed before, but it resulted in giving to Texas a large and 
industrious German population, which continued to spread 
and prosper till the need of a newspaper in their own mother- 
tongue became a necessity and the inhabitants of New Braun- 
fels proposed a subscription to defray the expenses of securing 
a press and printing materials to establish one. Early in 
1852 a mass-meeting of the citizens was held to elect the editor 
and publisher of the new German organ, and three candidates 
* See “Ein Verbrechen der texanischen Regierung, mit einem Anhang 
liber die heistigen Indianer” in Lindheimer’s “Aufsiitze und Abhand. 
lungen.” pp. 63-78. 
