SPIDERS OF SOUTIIERX MEXICO 



253 



ranches on the plain, and the remaining days were spent on the slopes 

 of the hills about 1200 feet above sea level. 



Finally I decided to go to Tapachnla and the (niatemalan border — 

 although it turned out that I first had two days of good hunting at a 

 rubber plantation, La Zacualpa, on the way to Tapachnla. When we 

 reached Tapachnla on the evening of Thursday, August 5, the rain was 

 falling in torrents and did not stop even for a moment until Sunday. We 

 wanted to reach the Guatemalan border from Tapachnla and return on 



E. O. Uovey, Photo., 1906. 



ON THE TEHUANTEPEC RIVER. 



the same day, the distance l)eing only some forty-eight kilometers on the 

 Pan-American Railroad, but the country was already so flooded that the 

 train proceeded very slowly. At one place it stopped, and a ditch was 

 made to allow the water to run from one side of the track to the other, 

 while an improvised support was constructed for the rails. Meanwhile 

 the rain began to fall again, and when, late in the afternoon, we reached 

 the last station, about one kilometer from the border, the conductor was 

 so afraid of a washout, since the wheels of the cars were already plowing 

 through water in many places, that after only a twenty-minute wait he 



