i am allowed to print a letter which bears upon several points to which i have alluded. it is not cheerful reading for the enthusiast. he will be apt to cry, "would that the difficulties and perils were infinitely graver—so grave that the collecting grounds might have a rest for twenty years!"
january 19th, 1893.
dear sir,
i have received your two letters asking for cattleya lawrenceana, pancratium guianense, and catasetum pileatum. kindly excuse my answering your letters only to-day. but i have been away in the interior, and on my return was sick, besides other business taking up my time; i was unable to write until to-day. now let me give you some information concerning orchid-collecting in this colony. six or seven years ago, just when the gold industry was starting, very few people ever ventured in the far interior. boats, river-hands, and indians could be hired at ridiculously low prices, and travelling and bartering paid; wages for indians being about a shilling per day, and all found; the same for river-hands. captains and boatswains to pilot the boat through the rapids up and down for sixty-four cents a day. to-day you have got to pay sixty-four to eighty cents per day for indians and river-hands. captains and boatswains, $2 the former, and $1:50 the latter per day, and then you often cannot get them. boat-hire used to be $8 to $10 for a big boat for three to four months; to-day $5, $6, and $7 per day, and all through the rapid development of the gold industry. as you can calculate twenty-five days' river travel to get within reach of the savannah lands, you can reckon what the expenses must be, and then again about five to seven days coming down the river, and a couple of days to lay over. then you must count two trips like this, one to bring you up, and one to bring you down three months after, when you return with your collection. besides this, you run the risk of losing your boat in the rapids either way, which happens not very unfrequently either going or coming; and we have not only to record the loss of several boats with goods, etc., every month, but generally to record the loss of life; only two cases happening last month, in one case seven, in the other twelve men losing their lives. besides, river-hands and blacks will not go further than the boats can travel, and nothing will induce them to go among the indians, being afraid of getting poisoned by inds. (kaiserimas) or strangled. so you have to rely utterly on indians, which you often cannot get, as the district of roraima is very poorly inhabited, and most of the indians died by smallpox and measles breaking out among them four years ago, and those that survived left the district, and you will find whole districts nearly uninhabited. about five years ago i went up with mr. osmers to roraima, but he broke down before we reached the savannah. he lay there for a week, and i gave him up; he recovered, however, and dragged himself into the savannah near roraima, about three days distant from it, where i left him. here we found and made a splendid collection of about 3000 first-class plants of different kinds.
while i was going up to roraima, he stayed in the savannah, still too sick to go further. at roraima i collected everything except catt. lawrenceana, which was utterly rooted out already by former collectors. on my return to osmers' camp, i found him more dead than alive, thrown down by a new attack of sickness; but not alone that, i also found him abandoned by most of our indians, who had fled on account of the kanaima having killed three of their number. so mr. osmers—who got soon better—and i, made up our baskets with plants, and made everything ready. our indians returning partly, i sent him ahead with as many loads as we could carry, i staying behind with the rest of baskets of plants. had all our indians come back, we would have been all right, but this not being the case i had to stay until the indians returned and fetched me off. after this we got back all right. this was before the sickness broke out among the indians.
last year i went up with mr. kromer, who met me going up-river while i was coming down. so i joined him. we got up all right to the river's head, but here our troubles began, as we got only about eight indians to go on with us who had worked in the gold-diggings, and no others could be had, the district being abandoned. we had to pay them half a dollar a day to carry loads. so we pushed on, carrying part of our loads, leaving the rest of our cargo behind, until we reached the savannah, when we had to send them back several times to get the balance of our goods. from the time we reached the savannah we were starving, more or less, as we could procure only very little provisions. we hunted all about for catt. lawrenceana, and got only about 1500 or so, it growing only here and there. at roraima we did not hunt at all, as the district is utterly rubbed out by the indians. we were about fourteen days at roraima and got plenty of utricularia campbelliana, u. humboldtii, and u. montana. also zygopetalum, cyp. lindleyanum, oncidium nigratum (only fifty—very rare now), cypripedium schomburgkianum, zygopetalum burkeii, and in fact, all that is to be found on and about roraima, except the cattleya lawrenceana. also plenty others, as sobralia, liliastrum, etc. so our collection was not a very great one; we had the hardest trouble now through the want of indians to carry the loads. besides this, the rainy weather set in and our loads suffered badly for all the care we took of them. besides, the indians got disagreeable, having to go back several times to bring the remaining baskets. nevertheless, we got down as far as the curubing mountains. up to this time we were more or less always starving. arrived at the curubing mountains, procured a scant supply of provisions, but lost nearly all of them in a small creek, and what was saved was spoiling under our eyes, it being then that the rainy season had fully started, drenching us from morning to night. it took us nine days to get our loads over the mountain, where our boat was to reach us to take us down river. and we were for two and a half days entirely without food. besides the plants being damaged by stress of weather, the indians had opened the baskets and thrown partly the loads away, not being able to carry the heavy soaked-through baskets over the mountains, so making us lose the best of our plants.
arrived at our landing we had to wait for our boat, which arrived a week later in consequence of the river being high, and, of course, short of provisions. still, we got away with what we had of our loads until we reached the first gold places kept by a friend of mine, who supplied us with food. thereafter we started for town. halfway, at kapuri falls (one of the most dangerous), we swamped down over a rock, and so we lost some of our things; still saved all our plants, though they lay for a few hours under water with the boat. after this we reached town in safety. so after coming home we found, on packing up, that we had only about 900 plants, that is, cattleya lawrenceana, of which about one-third good, one-third medium, and one-third poor quality. this trip took us about three and a half months, and cost over 2500 dollars. besides, i having poisoned my leg on a rotten stump which i run up in my foot, lay for four months suffering terrible pain.
you will, of course, see from this that orchid-hunting is no pleasure, as you of course know, but what i want to point out to you is that cattleya lawrenceana is very rare in the interior now.
the river expenses fearfully high, in fact, unreasonably high, on account of the gold-digging. labourers getting 64 c. to $1.00 per day, and all found. no indians to be got, and those that you can get at ridiculous prices, and getting them, too, by working on places where they build and thatch houses and clear the ground from underbush, and as huntsmen for gold-diggers. even if mr. kromer had succeeded to get 3000 or 4000 fine cattleya lawrenceana, it would have been of no value to us, as we could not have got anybody to carry them to the river where a boat could reach. besides this, i also must tell you that there is a license to be paid out here if you want to collect orchids, amounting to $100, which mr. kromer had to pay, and also an export tax duty of 2 cents per piece. so that orchid collecting is made a very expensive affair. besides its success being very doubtful, even if a man is very well acquainted with indian life and has visited the savannah reaches year after year. we spent something over $2500 to $2900, including mr. kromer's and steigfer's passage out, on our last expedition.
if you want to get any lawrenceana, you will have to send yourself, and as i said before, the results will be very doubtful. as far as i myself am concerned, i am interested besides my baking business, in the gold-diggings, and shall go up to the savannah in a few months. i can give you first-class references if you should be willing to send an expedition, and we could come to some arrangement; at least, you would save the expenses of the passage of one of your collectors. i may say that i am quite conversant with the way of packing orchids and handling them as well for travel as shipment.
kindly excuse, therefore, my lengthy letter and its bad writing. and if you should be inclined to go in for an expedition, just send me a list of what you require, and i will tell you whether the plants are found along the route of travel and in the savannah visited; as, for instance, catt. superba does not grow at all in the district where catt. lawrenceana is to be found, but far further south.
before closing, i beg you to let me know the prices of about twenty-five of the best of and prettiest south american orchids, which i want for my own collection, as catt. medellii, catt. trian?, odontoglossum crispum, miltonia vexillaria, catt. labiata, &c.
i shall await your answer as soon as possible, and send you a list by last mail of what is to be got in this colony.
we also found on our last visit something new—a very large bulbed oncidium, or may be catasetum, on the top of roraima, where we spent a night, but got only two specimens, one of which got lost, and the other one i left in the hands of mr. rodway, but so we tried our best. it decayed, having been too seriously damaged to revive and flower, and so enable us to see what it was, it not being in flower when found.
awaiting your kind reply,
yours truly,
seyler.
p.s.—if you should send out one of your collectors, or require any information, i shall be glad to give it.
