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Annual Reports of Academy of 
We all needed to become accustomed to the saddle and to the 
individual personalities of our mules. A good mule soon becomes 
a docile helper to a plant collector, permitting him to ride to the 
side of the trail or into bushes after flowers. But there is a 
Colombian saying that “a mule will be always a mule,” and a few 
thrilling occasions leave intact my belief that our beasts were 
genuine mules. 
We rode into hills covered with a chaparral shrub growth, and 
where the gorgeous “flor de Mayo” (flower of May), made an 
unforgetable impression. This Colombian favorite, of the tropical 
family of Melastomads, is a bush or small tree with large flowers, 
the petals of which are on opening a glorious pink-purple but later 
change to a deep violet. Nearer Popayan and in the same arid 
phase of the subtropical life-zone we saw our first oaks. These 
are stately trees, with glossy leaves that in form suggest a shingle 
or a narrow-leaved chestnut oak. On my earlier expedition to 
Colombia, which had taken me from the tropical lowland to above 
timber line on all three cordilleras of the Andes, I had come to 
consider that the Colombian oak was the surest indicator of the 
arid subtropical zone. Throughout the present trip it was found 
as consistently at this elevation and constantly denoted a dry- 
life phase of this zone of life. 
Placed in the subtropical zone of life, Popayan has a delightful 
temperature the year round,—the temperature we associate with 
late May, or early June. Fever-carrying insects and tropical 
plagues cease with the true tropical lowland, and in a climate with¬ 
out any winter there seems to be no menace to health. The city 
is beautifully situated at the base of the foothills of the Central 
Andes, wdth a clear view across the valley westward to the ridge 
of the Western Andes, rising to Santa Ana and Cerro Munchique. 
Behind and above the city, in the Central Andes, is the snow- 
covered summit of Purace, an almost continually smoking volcano. 
As should be expected from such an environment, Popayan is one of 
the most interesting of Spanish-American cities. Dating from 1536, 
founded by Belalcazar on his journey north from Quito in search 
of “El Dorado,” it has been throughout its history a chief governing 
and intellectual center of Colombia. Our residence there of more 
than six w^eeks,—our home, as guests of the Department of the 
Cauca. in an ancient and now abandoned Spanish convent—gave 
