12 



MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



[ VoH. 8, No. 1 



THE WESTERN ESCARPMENT 



Early in April, 1945, I was called to the Quito office to close up the work of 

 the explorers of the Misibn de Cinchona. The others already had left, some of 

 them several months previously. There was a last hurried errand along the Rio 

 Pastaza into the Oriente east of Bahos. And then on April 18 the work was of- 

 ficially ended. The next day I set out on the return trip to Cuenca, which was to 

 be headquarters for the remainder of my sojourn in Ecuador. 



My old crew of Jorgensen, Prieto and Giler reassembled the last days of April. 

 I had rented the residence which had housed the bodegas of the old Misibn de 

 Cinchona in Cuenca. This was admirably suited to our needs, for it gave us ample 

 room, both for the storage of specimens as they accumulated and as a residence 

 for the crew when in town. At last the collecting could follow a predetermined pat- 

 tern and not be a casual adjunct to the necessarily primary activity of search for 

 Cinchona. As a result it was determined that our first major objective would be to 

 attempt a transect of the western escarpment. 



Arrangements had been made previously with Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey to 

 occupy part of his establishment in the village of Huigra in the Canon of the Rio 

 Chanchan. We arrived at Huigra the evening of May 5 and the next day set up our 

 equipment in the then unused hospital which Dr. Dickey once operated. Adven- 

 turer, explorer, bon vivant, raconteur extraordinary, and tropical doctor, Dr. 

 Dickey, until his retirement, had been chief medical officer of the Quito-Guayaquil 

 railroad. His recent passing leaves a void among those choice personalities 

 which one sometimes encounters in out of the way places. 



Active collecting in this general area extended from May 7 to June 19. During 

 this time, our activities took us out onto the coastal plain in the region of Naran- 

 jito (Prov Guayas) at an elevation of about 120 ft. Here Prieto became quite ill, 

 for this was the first time in his life he had experienced real tropical heat al- 

 though he had never been more than a few degrees in latitude from the equator. 

 He was put on the train and sent back up to Huigra where I was certain he would 

 recover. 



After a few days in the region around Naranjito, we moved back toward the 

 mountains, to the town of Bucay. This area is at about 1000 ft. elevation and 

 still quite uncomfortable to one who has spent the previous year at much higher 

 elevations among the Andean peaks. Jorgensen fell ill soon after we arrived in 

 Bucay and was sent home to Guayaquil, where he could get adequate medical at- 

 tention. At this juncture it was ascertained by telegram that Prieto was recover- 

 ing rapidly and able to operate the driers. Therefore we sent the bulk of the equip- 

 ment to^him, at the same time making arrangements for the bundles of undried 

 collections to be put on the train early each morning and unloaded in Huigra, 

 where Prieto would be waiting for them. This left Giler and me completely free 

 to devote all our energies to collecting. They were small enough, since both of 

 us were having attacks of fever, which did not make the work easier. We stuck it 

 out for five days of collecting in the region around Bucay and then, finding that 

 the law of diminishing returns had begun to catch up with us, returned to Huigra. 



Prieto had been almost swamped with specimens, and so, while we all got 

 needed rests, we cleaned up the last of the accumulation and those "stubborn" 

 semi-succulents which always give difficulty in drying. Jorgensen returned but, 

 like the others, was not in good shape. There still was a stretch between the 

 2,000 and 3,000 ft. elevations which we had not touched. Of the three, Prieto 

 was then in best shape and so on June 19 he and I set out before dawn, feeling 

 our way across the ties between the rails. We arrived at the 3,000 ft. level just 



