January, 1911 
the village, each with a small 
wallet hung across his back, 
and at his side a machet to 
notch the trees in order that 
he may find his way back 
through the pathless forests. 
The mules with their wicker 
panniers and gay blankets 
added animation to the scene. 
Payment was to be made 
for the plants at so much a 
hundredweight. ‘The natives 
assumed that the senor want- 
ed the plants either to eat, or 
for medicinal purposes, in 
which case it made compara- 
tively little difference in what 
shape the goods were deliv- 
ered. And so the gatherers 
blightely hacked and tore the 
lovely plants from the trees in fragments and stuffed them 
into the sacks. When the pile of sacks was emptied out on 
the banks of the Magdalena, the expectant American was 
horrified. He spent nearly two days sorting out the plants, 
and out of the entire consign- 
ment only about one hundred 
were found intact! From that 
moment a scale of prices was 
agreed upon per plant. For 
the commoner varieties twenty 
cents a piece was paid and 
twenty-five cents apiece or 
more for the rarer specimens. 
The element of chance 
makes the income of the 
gatherer exceedingly uncer- 
tain. The orchid, which is 
fed by air, not earth, always 
attaches itself to a tree, fre- 
quently so tall that it cannot 
be selmtbed.” Nor is “tree 
climbing a very _ popular 
method of securing orchids, 
for the trunks are covered 
with a thick vegetation in which lurk scorpions, poisonous 
ants and deadly snakes. And so the tree must be chopped 
down. More often than not the orchids are so smashed 
by the fall as to be worthless, or else maybe there are only 
Colombia. 
Orchid, Cypripedium 
Orchid, Cypripedium Brownu 
Orchid, Odontoglossum crispum, from the high mountains of the Andes, 
Valued at $4,500 
Orchid, Paphiopedilum Chamberlaino Rothschildianum 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 35 
three or four; but in other 
cases, the whole trunk, from 
a height of three feet to the 
top, and all the boughs and 
branches, are fairly covered 
with blossoms with the most 
exquisite color, so that the 
tree looks for all the world 
like a lavender, pink, or yel- 
low column capped with a 
gorgeous hanging garden. 
But it is with the adventures 
of the professional hunter 
after the rarest of orchids 
that we have to deal—the 
man who sets out with a num- 
ber of natives on a search 
that will end either in success 
or death. You may cease to 
wonder, perhaps, at the fabu- 
lous sums paid for orchids when you learn the price paid in 
human lives in the gathering of that rare and beautiful 
flower. Falkenberg in Panama, Klaboch in Mexico, Endres 
on the Rio Hacha, Wallace in Ecuador, Schroeder in Sierra 
Leone, Arnold on the Orino- 
co, Digance in Brazil, Brown 
in Madagascar—all these 
orchid hunters met tragic 
deaths through wild beasts, 
hostile savages, fevers and 
accidents. 
George Barrault is a typ- 
ical example of the kind of 
stuff that orchid hunters are 
made of. He was employed 
by Mrs. George Wilson, of 
Philadelphia (whose collec- 
tion of orchids is worth con- 
siderably more than a million 
dollars) to search for rare 
South American orchids. For 
four years he dared death in 
many forms. 
He has been near death’s 
: 
door with the fevers of the tropics and _ tropical 
swamps, he has been robbed and deserted by his 
guides and left alone to starve in Andean moun- 
tain forests, and has been attacked, tormented and 
Orchid, Arides virens from India 
