TOPOGRAPHY AND RAILROADS 1 5 



Near each cabin grew as a rule a group of breadfruit trees 

 {Artocarpus communis) with their deeply-divided large 

 glossy leaves. In early November the green fruit was nine 

 inches in length and somewhat eggplant-shaped. In late 

 November we bought a breadfruit at Siquirres, for ten cen- 

 timos, and had it baked for us at Cartago. In taste it re- 

 sembles a sweet potato which is not sweet — butter and salt 

 were required, we thought. The fruit is very solid; the 

 rind thin and marked off in little polygons, corresponding 

 to the individual fruits composing it, for the breadfruit is a 

 multiple fruit allied to the mulberry and the fig. We never 

 saw it in the market at Cartago, and the tree is confined to 

 the low warm sections. Its native home is the South Sea 

 Islands; in Costa Rica it is known as "arbol de pan," and the 

 fruit "fruta de pan." 



Scattered through the banana plantations stood giant 

 trees whose great trunks, without a branch up to a height of 

 fifty feet or more, proclaimed them to be remains of a for- 

 est which formerly covered all this area. Lianas hung 

 from their branches or bromeliads with long narrow green 

 leaves and bright red flowers grew on the trunks even of 

 dead trees. Especially near Siquirres, huge festoons of the 

 gray moss-like bromeliad Tillandsia depended from among 

 the proper foliage. There were also rubber trees {Castilloa 

 sp.) here and there — but not those cultivated under that 

 name in the United States as ornamental plants, which are 

 properly figs {Ficus sp.). 



The alternative rail route from Limon to Zent Junction, 

 the main line of the Costa Rica Railway, ran in sight of the 

 surf to Swamp Mouth, then bent to the west and entered a 

 forest consisting in some places exclusively of "swamp 

 palms," in others of the same palms mixed with exogenous 

 trees. These palms have leaves resembling those of the 

 cocoanut palm but rather coarser, and differing in that each 



