HUNTING FOR ORCHIDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9185, 27 April 1893, Page 3

HUNTING FOR ORCHIDS.

Concerning the " Home of the Orchid," thus writes Albert Millican in his recent work, "Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter": — Odontoglossum odoraturn is most conspicuous, us well for. its heavy-branched spike of flowers as for its powerful smell, which tills the air until it becomes oppressive. The plants are almost hidden from sight in the trailing mass of lichen, and when they are not in flower they are difficult to find. I arrived at night at the hut called El Oritz, after a toilsome ride, but the whole journey had been made through a wealth of orchids. Being informed by the natives that the Odontoglossum crispum had all been taken away from here, leaving only the Odontoglossum odoratum, I was obliged to continue my journey over the top of the mountain range, along a track which is too bad to describe j but at the same time the scenery is very beautiful. After threa days' journey, passing on the way a lovely valley, rich with patches of sugar-cane and maize, and also a small village called Buenavista, I struck into the forest, in the direction of Emerald Mine. Here, at an altitude of about 8500 feet above the sea-level, I found an abundance of plants, their magnificent spikes of flowers looking doubly beautiful hanging from the branches of the trees, some high up out of reach of the native climbers, and others so low as to be easily pulled off by hand. My next consideration was to muster a company of natives sufficient to enable me to secure a quantity of the mountain treasures I had come so far to seek. These natives I engaged, to the number of about thirty, in the nearest village, called Maripi. Here also we found sufficient provisions for about a week. These were taken on the backs of mulcts to the edge of the forest, and then each man was supplied with his pack to carry through the forest where wo intended to make our camp, away on the edge of a mountain stream. The . journey with the provisions took up two days, and on arriving at the site of our proposed camp we lost no time in constructing a rude hut, which served to shelter us for the first night, and which we eventually improved sufficiently to afford us protection for about a month. In those immense forests, where a few acres of clearing is considered a great benefit, and where clearings made, if not attended to, become forests again in three years, cutting down a few thousands of trees is no serious injury ; so I provided my natives with axes and started them out on the work of cutting down all trees containing valuable orchids, and although for the first day or two they were very much given to mistake a clump of Bromeliacoe or Maxillaria for Odontoglossum crispum, they soon became' adepts at plant-collecting, and would bring to our camp several hundreds of plants each night, with occasionally a few Odontoglossum odoratum and Odontoglossum corodinci mixed amongst them. After about two months' work we had secured about ten thousand plants, cutting down to obtain these somo four thousand trees, moving our camp as the plants became exhausted in the vicinity. Our next consideration was how to transport these plants to where sawn wood could bo obtained. First, they had to be taken to the edge of the forest on men's backs, and even then we were five days' journey from the town of Pacho, where it is usual to make the boxes to pack the orchids in for shipment to England. We got over our difficulty by making about forty capacious baskets of thin sticks, cut in the forest. In these we.packed all the plants, and carried them on the backs of bullocks to Pacho, where they were quickly placed in strong wooden cases, being still ten days' journey from the coast. From hero mules are employed to travel with them to the banks of the Magdalcna river, und from there the steamboats quickly transport them to the coastal town. Agiucola.