282 THE PI.ANT WORLD 



on the island do disappear into sink-holes, and after wandering through 

 underground channels in the lime-stone issue from grottos near the sea. 



We now entered the finca adjoining that of Don Joaquin, and stopped 

 for a drink of coconut water. After taking leave of him we crossed the 

 mouth of the Pago River on a balsa, or raft, composed of several layers 

 of bamboo, my cow swimming by the side of the raft. The ferry cable 

 was a rope twisted of hibiscus fibre. I called the attention of Baza to the 

 fact that this rope would be much stronger and more durable if it were 

 thoroughly soaked in tar after the manner in which hemp ropes are tarred 

 for use in the Navy. Hibiscus tiliacezis, which yields this fibre, is a littoral 

 tree of wide distribution in the tropics. It has heart-shaped leaves and 

 yellow hollyhock-like flowers with dark centers. The fibre is obtained 

 from the bast, or inner bark. 



We now turned to the southward and entered the district called Yona, 

 which is a level stretch of country of some elevation. We saw no village, 

 but there were several assemblies of small farms called rancherias . And 

 Baza entertained me bj^ stories concerning the various owners of the 

 farms as we passed along. The seiiora who owned this farm had no 

 trouble in getting men to work for her, for she paid them by making hats 

 for them. The owner of another one had gotten into trouble for having 

 shot cattle which he found destroying his corn. Coming to a rancho 

 where we saw a great pile of betel nuts, he told me that the woman who 

 lived here collected the nuts and carried them to Agana for sale. She 

 was a thrifty woman, but avaricious, and not very much esteemed by her 

 neighbors.* 



On the next farm lived a man and wife who were both blind. We 

 were struck by the fine condition of the various garden patches, and I was 

 told that the son of these poor people not onl}^ cultivated the farm with 

 his own hands, but took care of his parents personally. As we approached 

 the house Baza called out and we were invited by some one to enter. We 

 found an old man engaged in twisting pine-apple fibre into thread for 

 making cast-nets. He had not even a vestige of eyes, the skin of his fore- 

 head and cheeks growing together continuously^ His wife, on the other 

 side of the house, was bed-ridden as well as blind. Everj'thing in the 

 house was orderl}^ and the clothing of the old people looked neat and 

 clean. Not far from the house was a field of corn, a nursery of tobacco 

 seedlings, and a little farther away a plantation of young coconuts set out 

 regularlj^ in rows. At the edge of a wood a sleek little cow was tethered 

 to a tree to keep her out of a neighboring patch of cultivation. In a 



*It afterwards came to my notice that this woman, who married one of the young men working 

 for her, in obedience to the order of the Governor, previously referred to, had entered in the register 

 as her property a tract of land including that of a blind uncle, who lived on the adjacent farm The 

 entry was evidently fraudulent, even for her own land. She said her father had left it to her, and that 

 her sister had no right to any part of it because she was an invalid. The whole family bore marks of 

 inherited disease. 



