orchids and orchidology in central america. 500 ... - lankesteriana.org

Other travelers in Central America (I): 1839-1870
ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America
Put everything into your pocket!
Baron Hügel’s advice to botanists
There are several very interesting accounts of travels
through Central America, written by persons who came
for various motives (never primarily as botanists), but
which contain some interesting descriptions, which
shall be commented hereafter.
John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852), born in
Shrewsbury, New Jersey, traveled in 1834 through
Europe, Palestine and Egypt, in the company of
Frederick Catherwood, an Englishman who would
illustrate most of his travel journals. In 1839, Stephens
and Catherwood decided to explore Central America.
United States President Van Buren, in order to
support the expedition, gave Stephens a diplomatic
commission. He visited Belize, Guatemala, Honduras,
Costa Rica and Nicaragua and dedicated his main
efforts to the explorations of the Mayan ruins of
Copán (Honduras), where Catherwood made beautiful
illustrations. In Guatemala, he made the acquaintance
of George U. Skinner: “[...] I went to the house of
Mr. Zebadous ... There I met Mr. Chatfield, General
Consul of Her British Majesty, and Mr. Skinner, who
had arrived during my absence”. In another chapter he
mentions the firm of Klee and Skinner, who “where
the most important foreign merchants in Guatemala”
(Stephens, 1971: 277, 222). Stephens became later
one of the directors of the American Ocean Steam
Navigation Co. He was in Panama with the purpose of
exploring the terrain for the construction of a railroad
through the isthmus and was later president of the
Panama Railroad Company, which would become so
important for the botanical exploration of the region.
Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) (Fig. 40D)
“came to Nicaragua in the year of 1849 as charge
d’affairs of the United States and while occupying this
diplomatic position rendered valuable services fighting
England’s expansionistic tendencies in the Mosquito
Coast. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1880 between
the United Stated and Great Britain, which guaranteed
effectively for half a century Central America’s
independence, was signed mainly through his efforts. An
enthusiastic promoter of the opening of an interoceanic
canal, he contributed, through his studies and research,
greatly to broaden the geographical and geological
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knowledge relative to the Central American Isthmus.
He returned to Central America in 1853 to direct studies
for the Honduran Interoceanic Railway Company, of
which he was Secretary and whose interests he had
been promoting in Europe; but this railway project was
later abandoned” (Fernández Guardia, 1972: 265-266).
Squier traveled through Nicaragua, El Salvador and
Honduras, but it was Nicaragua the country he knew
best. He wrote an important book about this country,
which was published in 1860 (cited here is the Spasnish
version of 1972). In several passages of his book, Squier
describes the trees of the forest, full of ‘parasites’, in
many cases surely orchids. “The pendent branches
full of parasites...” “From there on the countryside [...]
is full of ‘jicarales’ (Crescentia spp.) covered to such
extent with parasitic plants that they almost conceal the
branches of these trees”. He also mentions a narrative
by his friend Julius Froebel about his ascent to the Telica
volcano, near León, in which he writes: “On the highest
rim of the crater I found an orchid, whose crimson stems
are similar to some varieties of our German orchids”
(Squier, 1972: 319, 404, 436).
Julius Froebel (1805-1893), nephew of Friedrich
Froebel the celebrated educational reformer and
founder of the kindergarten system, had been
sentenced to death in 1848 for his participation of
the German Revolution of that year, and fled to the
United States. He arrived in Nicaragua in 1850, where
he made important studies about the language of the
Sumo Indians. His studies of Mayan architecture and
linguistics are still used extensively. In 1857 he was in
Belize, studying the suitability of British Honduras for
German emigration.
Friedrich Wilhelm Adolph Marr (1819-1904) was
born in Magdeburg, Germany, a son of the famous
actor Heinrich Marr. The discovery of the Californian
gold mines and the projects for an interoceanic canal
in Nicaragua or Panama awakened his interests, and
in 1852 he traveled to New York and from there to
Nicaragua and Costa Rica. While in Nicaragua, he
practiced as an improvised physician. In Costa Rica
he became an engineer and finally a merchant, until he
returned to Germany in 1853, with a commission by
the Costa Rican government to bring German colonists
to the country. He failed in this purpose and returned
to Costa Rica in 1854, where he established himself
as a merchant in Puntarenas. He returned to Hamburg
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.