72 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
of a larger growth. So many failures at colonizing 
people from the north in these hot southern lands had 
come to my notice that I had become skeptical of its 
successful accomplishment in any instance; yet here 
in the tropics were the bobwhites, essentially a group 
of the temperate regions, living as cheerfully as pos- 
sible, and upsetting my preconceived ideas. 
“After passing some time in this district we hired 
an oxcart one evening, and were trundled across the 
plains to the coast during the cool hours of the night. 
There, on the sandy shore, we waited ten days for a 
steamer, which finally carried us back to Tehuantepec. 
From this place a railroad crosses the Isthmus to the 
port of Coatzacoalcos, on the Gulf of Mexico, and we 
took advantage of it to reach the eastern coast. Coat- 
zacoalcos is a curious little town, destined to play an 
important part in the development of southern Mexico 
and western Guatemala. It is one of the few places 
in Mexico where small frame houses are the prevail- 
ing style, and reminds one more of some small mining 
camp in the Far West than of a seaport on the Gulf 
of Mexico. Here, where yellow fever, malaria and 
other ills stalk about, according to the season, we 
heard of howling monkeys, jaguars, tapirs, and other 
tropical creatures with which we still desired to be- 
come more familiar. For this purpose we ascended 
the Coatzacoalcos River about twenty miles, to the 
town of Minatitlan, a place once noted for its enor- 
mous trade in Spanish cedar and dyewoods. We re- 
mained here some days, in the midst of the coast low- 
