Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 
15 
Indians, I crawled under the tarpaulin, and we were off. I he 
Banbana River was partly in flood, so we made fast time under the 
six paddles, passing through the Walpa-tara Rapids at nine o’clock 
that night during an unusually heavy downpour of rain. The 
river gained in flood as we neared the Banbana mouth, and so did the 
rain, keeping the Indians bailing frequently to prevent the water 
reaching my bed and baggage. I was not at all loath to leave the 
pitpan at eight o’clock on the morning of the 7th and see my 
baggage put in the warehouse at Prinzapolka. 
The Schooner “Star’ ; put in on the 12th and took me to Blue- 
fields, whence on the 18th I sailed for New Orleans. 
We had collected mammals representing about twenty species; 
six hundred and twenty-five birds representing over two hundred 
species, two or three apparently new to science, together with 
twenty-six sets of eggs with their nests, about a thousand specimens 
of fish and reptiles, and some seven thousand insects. 
THROUGH THE ANDES OF WESTERN COLOMBIA* 
By Francis W. Pennell. 
Travellers, especially botanists, could not ask for a finer intro¬ 
duction to any country than is afforded by the railroad ride from 
Buenaventura on the Pacific coast of Colombia to La Cumbre, near 
the summit of the western Andes. The succession of scenery, from 
the near and intimate view of the Tropical forest with its richness of 
detail, on through the gorge of the Dagua River and up to an ele¬ 
vation where the eye obtains a vast view of the summits of two 
Andean cordilleras, affords most remarkable and beautiful contrasts. 
The change in plant life from the shore and the heavily-wooded 
lowland to arid slopes, with distant views of prairie or mountain 
forests, is as botanically interesting as it is fascinating. There 
were three of us taking this ride one morning in early May, 1922. 
We were entering Colombia for the purpose of botanical collecting 
* Account of an expedition for botanical exploration undertaken jointly on 
behalf of The New York Botanical Garden, Gray Herbarium of Harvard Uni¬ 
versity, United States National Museum, and the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia. The party consisted of Dr. Francis W. Pennell of the Academy 
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Pennell. 
