22 
Annual Reports of Academy of 
l nited States, while Dr. Tracy E. Hazen, of Columbia University, 
joined Mr. Killip and myself for the journey into the Quindio. 
The northern Central Andes, locally known as the Quindio, affor¬ 
ded an excellent opportunity to study the distribution and composi¬ 
tion of the flora of the high Andes. 
We proceeded down the Cauca River by steamboat from Cali 
to the little port of Zarzal. There our mules were waiting and we 
started at once eastward to Armenia and Salento. The route to 
Armenia lay across the tropical valley of the Cauca and was 
chiefly memorable for the vast groves of bamboos seen. Indeed, a 
band of vegetation just below the base of the cordillera must have 
been originally one almost solid growth of bamboo, forty or fifty 
feet in height. There were also many palms. 
At Salento, a small town on the middle western slopes of the 
Central Andes, we rented a house surprisingly adapted to our needs. 
From this base, excursions were made into the surrounding forest, 
but our chief interest again took us to higher levels. Mr. Killip 
and Dr. Hazen took the journey over the historic old Quindio trail, 
returning via the new graded trail recently built by the govern¬ 
ment, some miles south of the old course. Mr. Killip spent some 
days in the capitol of Colombia, Bogota, a city well known to me 
through three months’ residence in 1917. So in August I went, 
by invitation of Sr. Alfonso Tobon, nephew of the President of 
Colombia, to his mountain estate of ‘"Alaska,” where I was soon 
joined by Dr. Hazen. 
“Alaska” deserves its name. The estate is placed high on the 
side of the Cordillera, and the ruthless methods of Sr. Tobon s 
predecessors have changed a region originally covered with most 
beautiful forest into a bleak desolation. In order to form pasturage 
every vestige of forest has been cleared, the scrub cut, and old logs 
burned. One wonders how many years will go by before Colom¬ 
bians regret heartily a policy of utter forest destruction. It seems 
pitiful, too, to see with what zeal settlers in the virgin beauty of a 
forest loaded with luxuriant epiphytes, will plant the Australian 
Eucalyptus , a tree whose gray-blue foliage and bare branches seem 
better fitted to city streets. 
We wished to go above “Alaska,” so, by the planning of Sr. 
Tobon and with a small party of his friends, Dr. Hazen and I 
went up for several days of camping on the paramo. We were 
