24 
Annual Reports of Academy of 
sentation of the paramo life of the northern central Andes. W e 
were unable to give as much time as we had hoped to the flora of 
the temperate forest just beneath this, but here again the two 
expeditions supplement each other. 
On our descent from the Quindio in late August, Dr. Hazen had 
to return promptly to New York for his college work. Mr. Killip 
being desirous of collecting again at La Cumbre, in order to obtain 
many orchids seen by us in May only in leaf, accompanied Dr. 
Hazen to that convenient and attractive center. 
With a capable peon, and with a reduced outfit of four cargo 
mules, I visited first Manizales, the seat of government for the 
Department of Caldas. From this city we proceeded directly 
westward to the high portion of the Western Andes which is a 
landmark from very far. The chain seems to rise suddenly to form 
a flat table, actually the short but high ridge of the Cerro Tatama. 
Although from the Cauca valley and from Santuario the highland 
appears wooded to the summit, I had reliable information that 
the upper slopes would be true paramo. 
I was most hospitably received at Santuario, and I had no 
difficulty in arranging for a guide to the paramo. There was danger 
of oncoming rains, although as yet the weather was good. So I 
arranged to make a quick journey to the mountain paramos, al¬ 
lowing two days there. From a previous experience, when I had 
climbed to the Paramo de Chaquiro, one of the northernmost 
summits of the Western Andes, discovering it to be a paramo with 
a uniform and rather meagre flora, I believed that two days would 
allow r sufficient time. Beside the danger of the September rains 
I was influenced by the reported difficulty of carrying up provisions 
for any stay of length. 
So with two helpers I started into the forest from the cottage of 
Sr. Campia, situated in the subtropical forest on the lower slopes 
of the cordillera. My guide thought that we might be up in 
a day, and certainly in a day and another morning. We could see 
our goal, full before us in a dark-green line of cliffs, not twenty 
miles away. The “trail’' proved to be only an old cut path over 
which no one had traveled for eighteen months! It was well that 
I had taken the best guide obtainable in the village. He had been 
over the way, but his mode of progress was not the northern guide’s 
observation of landmarks. Rather, like a hound on the scent, he 
