The Capriciousness of Fame by MICHAEL F

OBSERVER The Capriciousness of Fame By MICHAEL F. BROWN HE TINY ISLAND of Esteves lies just off the Whether injured in the mutiny or affected by shore of Lake Titicaca on the outskirts of altitude sickness, Orton's health began to fail as he Puno, the capital of Peru's Altiplano re and Heath crossed the mountains to Lake Titicaca, Tgion. My family and I were traveling with where they booked passage on a schooner bound a group of Williams College alumni as part of a for Puno. Halfway across the lake, Orton took a program that pairs alumni with faculty knowledge turn for the worse and died. able about a destination's natural environment or Because Orton was Protestant, local church offi culture. When I discovered that a forgotten chap cials refused to allow his burial in the town's cem ter of Williams history could be explored close to etery, but the owner of Isla Esteves was an Orton our hotel, we took a detour to the hill at the island's admin:r and graciouslY offered a burial sire on the center. island. A makeshift grave was replaced in 1921 by Here was the grave site of]ames Orton (1830- a stone monument paid for by the Vassar Alumni 77), Williams CoUege Class of 1855. The story of Association. The inscription On the monument how Orton came to be buried so far &om home .reads, in part, "In memory of]ames Orton, learned weaves together the history of one rna n's passion -North American author, professor, explorer of for the natural sciences and the transformation of South America." Orton's field notes and specimens American higher education in the 19th century. from hls last expedition disappeared in transit from Today, when lavish Support for the life sciences Puno and have never been recovered. threatens to turn the humanities into an after thought at some American research universities, it RTON is scarcely remembered at Wil is hard to imagine the precarious situation of the liams today, despite his long and cordial sciences in the early 1800s. Most institutions of connection to the college. His name is at higher education saw the study of nature primarily -0. cached to a student prize offered annually as a way to contemplate the beauty of God's cre to a promising senior anthropology major, but as ation. Most colleges did not endow professorships far as I know, our alumni group was the first Wil in geology, botany, or astronomy until decades liams delegation ever to visit Orton's grave. Vassar later. does a better job of honoring his life and work: An Frustrated by institutional reluctance to embrace alumni publication recently dubbed him "Vassar's the new insights of natural science, a group of Indiana Jones." Williams students founded a Lyceum of Natural In the world at large, Orton has vanished almost History in 1839. This was part of a national grass James Orton, 1830-77 as completely as his 1877 field notes. A river in roots student. movement that agitated for the cre northern Bolivia bears his name (misspelled on ation of natural-history museums and the addition some maps as Orthon), as does the settlement at of science courses to college curricula. Although Harvard, the American Museum of Natural Histo the river's mouth (BoCa de Orton, populatiOn 50). many of the first coUege museums were little more ry, and the Smithsonian. His name lingers on in the speCies or subspecies than cabinets of curiosities stocked by well-traveled The success of Orton's first expedition led in epithets of two South American reptiles, including gentlemen, they laid the groundwork for more 1869 to an appointment at Vassar College, where Orton's Anole (Anolis ortonit), and in a genus of in systematic collections at universities and nascent he chaired its natural-history department. His fe sects (Ortonia) whose taxonomic status is disputed research institutions. verish productivity over the next four years makes in some quarters. That's about it. James Orton matriculated at Williams after today's publish-or-perish credo seem like a slacker's Why hasn't Orton been admitted to the pan demonstrating a gih for science during his high hoi iday. The most widely read of his works was a theon of scientific explorers he tried so hard to school years. At Williams he joined the Lyceum of popular account of his first expedition, The Andes emulate? The brevity of his academic career, Natural History's expeditions to Newfoundland and the Amazon (1870), a best seller in its time. which lasted only II years, surely plays a part. and Nova Scotia, eventually becoming .~he lyceum's Orton wrote quickly and well. His descriptions He may also have been too much of a generalist president in his senior year:. are evocative and detailed, mostly shunriing the to make a permanent mark on any one field of After a brief stint as a minister to rural congre flo:wery rhetoric characteristic of his time. Un natural history. Perhaps his appointment at a gations in Maine and New York, Orton yielded to fortunately, his progressive scientific views were newly established-women's college left him at the his love of science, accepting a visiting position as not matched by similar attitudes toward race and margins of the prestige hierarchy of the natural a professor of natural history at the University of culture. He regarded South America's population sciences. Rochester. A year lat~r, Williams's lyceum invited as indolent and corrupt, incapable of developing . As my wife and I raised a glass to Orton's mem him to lead an expedition to SoUth Am:erica-with---· its.Q;J:tions without the help of American discipline ory after our visit to his grave, I found myself modest financial support from the college's trust and knoW-hOw.- pondering the capriciousness of fame. Most aca ees. However distasteful Orton's prejudices are to demics believe· that thi"Ough ·our scholarly labors, The first of what became three expeditions modern sensibilities, it's hard not to admire his we make a significant contribUtion to our chosen took Orton and his companiOns from New York determination to join the ranks of the world's great discipline and perhaps even to human under to Quito, Ecuador. From there they made their sCientific explorers. For his second expedition, standing in general. Yet whether we die in medias way by horseback across the mountains and down which began in 1873, he ascended the Amazon res, as Orton did, or end our careers voluntarily the vertiginous eastern side of the Andes toward from Brazil, concluding the journey by climbing with the label "emeritus" attached to our titles, the Amazon, a punishing journey that over the the famously difficult trail from Balsa puerto to our offices and labs will soon be occupied by centuries had taken the lives of many foreign Moyobamba and then on to the Pacific coast. others. Over the decades, most of us will merge travelers. Orton managed the first two expeditions without into the undifferentiated mass of an institution's In this·and Orton's subsequent expeditions to major crises, hut his luck ran out on the third. He ancestral figures, remembered collectively rather South America, he scrambled up volcanoes, col and another American, Ivon Heath, set out in 1877 than individuaUy. lected specimens of every plant, animal, or mineral to explore the previously unmapped Rio Beni of One could fare worse than to be memorialized within reach, and recorded observations on local northern Bolivia's Amazonian region .. Battered by by a column of granite on the shore of Lake Titica customs and languages. He even tried his hand violent tropical storms and tormented by biting ca, prompting the occasional visitor to ask, "Who at archaeology, although by today's standards his insects, soldiers attached to the party mutinied and was James Orton and how did he end up here?" • work was only a step -removed from looting. Hun decamped with most of the group's supplies. Orton dreds of the group's specimens found their way and Heath had no choice but to retreat back into Michati F. BroW11 is a poftssor ofanthropology and to the cabinets of scientific institutions, including the mountains. Latin American studies at Wiilia1ns College. 820 THE CHRONICLE REVIEW MARCH 28, l0l4 .

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