ORCHID HUNTING IN COLUMBIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 7 April 1892, Page 39

ORCHID HUNTING IN COLUMBIA.

If orchid growing has its excitements, much more has orchid hunting. These flowers have to be sought through as many adventures, and in woods as haunted by snakes and savages with poisoned arrows, as ever was the Fleece of Gold.

They are found in lands where of old men went wandering in quest of the City of the Sun, of Eldorado, of the Fountain of Youth.

First a long voyage has to be undertaken, then a long railway journey through the State of Colombia, and then tbe railroad becomes a track, the track becomes a trail, forests have to be penetrated, rivers to be swum, cactus thickets to be cut through, the Andes to be scaled, and after that there remains a week's journey among hills over which the condor flies, and through woods where the Indian poisons his arrow-heads.

Thousands of trees have then to be cut down for tbe sake of the Cattleya Mendelii that festoons them, a flower born in the purple, and much more magnificent than Solomon in all his glory.

Next the bulbs have to be packed, and carried by men or on muleback, or by bullock, all the long way to the railway, and there remain the dangers of tropical heat, while bulbs die off like negroes in the Middle Passage.

So laborious is it to bring orchids from beneath the volcanic home of the sacred emerald that at last they may trail their purple or golden flowers from little square baskets, in some hothouse of Upper Tooting. — Daily News.