The Washington Bee

ORCHID HUNTING.
PERILS AND PRIZES OF THE SEARCH IN
TROPICAL ISLANDS.

A Growing Business That Employs Many
Millions of Capital - The High Prices Cer-
tain Varieties Bring - Some of the Dan-
gers in Collecting the Flower.

East or west the tropic islands are
among the happiest hunting grounds
for that flower of the air, the orchid.
Yearly many men go in search of them
at inconceivable risk of life and limb.
Some few are scientific enthusiasts, or
the agent of scientific institutes. The
most part, however, go for revenue
only. Not every man can hunt orchids
successfully - in this calling, as in most
others, ability commands a high mark-
et price.

Statistics are uninteresting - still, it
is worth while to be told that the busi-
ness of orchid growing and orchid col-
lecting, though begun as late as 1830,
now employs a good many millions of
capital. Both here and abroad there
are collections whose value runs well
up into the hundred thousands, and
collectors with nerve enough to pay
$5,000 for a single specimen - provided
it be sufficiently unique. Further, there
was at least one grower long-headed
enough to refuse more than $5,000 for
an absolutely unique plant. It was
seedless and could be multiplied only
by the tedious process of rooting leaf
cuttings - hence, he saw his profit in
such multiplication, and preferred to
sell a hundred plants at a thousand
each, even though he had to wait some
years to do it.

Such men stand back of the orchid
hunters proper. Usually three or four
Europeans go together to a tropic port,
engage from fifty to a hundred na-
tives, buy all manner of supplies, and
strike straight into the wildest inter-
ior. Often the men carry everything;
sometimes there is a bullock train, or
even a train of bullock carts. But
that is impracticable in the true virgin
tropics, wherein the hunters find their
choicest treasures.

It is like a fairy tale to talk with
one of the returned explorers. You
hear of trees 300 feet high, literally
covered with orchids, or maybe a half
dozen species, each growing in its own
distinct zone or altitude. Some flour-
ish only upon the uppermost airy
boughs, others riot over the big
crotches where the branches come to-
gether, still others ring with blossom
the mossy bole, running up maybe 100
feet to the lowest limb. Sometimes
a tree is the fetish of the wild men
round about. In that case woe to the
sacrilegious outlanders who lay hand
or foot upon it. More than one ex-
pedition has been massacred for such
cause.

The destruction of such a tree
scattered and dispersed one of the sav-
agiest native tribes.
Their titular tree stood in a sort of
glade it had been seen by several
hunting parties, but none of them dared
touch it. When they went home
their accounts of it so wrought upon
the fancy of an English collector that
he offered an almost fabulous sum for
a section of the flower-wreathed trunk
Next year the orchid hunters found
the native tribe at war, and taking
advantage of the diversion, cut down
the tree and sent a segment down to
the coast, where, after many trials and
tribulations, it was got safe aboard
ship and in the end was the season's
wonder of a London conservatory. The
native worshipers coming back to find
what havoc had been wrought, at once
decided that their god had deserted
them in anger, hastened to make peace,
and ended by going in a mass to live
at the other side of their island.

Other than human enemies attack the
orchid hunters. One flower, especially
beautiful and of the most exquisite fra-
granee, grows only in the tree tops,
and so high that it is found by scent,
not sight. Wherever it grows, it is
overrun with ant swarms, red ants, not
very large, but warlike, and with
poisonous stings. The minute a tree
trunk trembles beneath axe-strokes
these ants swarm down and attack the
cutters most viciously, often forcing
them to suspend work. A more curi-
ous thing is that the flowers will not
live and bloom away from the ants.
Boughs overrun with their roots have
been submerged until the ant-colonies
were all drowned, then packed and
shipped with the rest.
But though given everything that the most finicky
orchid could ask in the way of light,
heat and moisture, they have merely
drooped and pined through one year
to die the next of simple inanition.
Then there are serpents, poison in-
sects and vines and herbs as poisonous,
to say nothing of panthers, pumas,
hurricanes, and tropic thunderbolts.
Over against them set the pleasures of
absolute lordship, the wonderful sights
and sounds of the strangely beauti-
ful tropic world, and beyond all that,
the hope, ever-present, ever luring, of
stumbling on a new flower worth
many times its weight in gold.
These are the prizes in the lottery
of orchids - hence the necessity of
hunting them in their season of bloom.
The roots come snugly packed in
wooden boxes. Curiously, they will
not bear the least touch of metal. The
boxes are commonly dove-tailed, and
often beautiful specimens of native
joiner work. Each box is carefully
labeled, dated, and marked with the
temperature and altitude at which the
plants it holds were found. Then,
with more boxes of its own sort, it
is slung one side of a sleek bullock,
and balanced with still other boxes
while the beast ambles and stumbles
his way to the sea.