WEST AND NORTH OF CART A GO III 



flowing through a grove of oaks (encinos) and other trees. 

 In fact this place was the lower limit of the oak forest here, 

 of which more hereafter, but the oaks must have reached 

 still lower down in former years for on another day I no- 

 ticed a solitary oak in a field between Tierra Blanca and 

 Cot at 6800 feet. This oak has leaves two to three inches 

 long and with entire edges, but the acorns are one and a 

 quarter inches long in some cases. Associated with the 

 oaks here at the Rio Reventado were at least two species of 

 the characteristic tropical American family, the Melastomes 

 — one a small-leaved tree {Conostegia) ten to fifteen feet high, 

 the other an herb (Miconia) with larger and softer leaves. 



Grasshoppers of familiar forms and colors {Chortophaga 

 meridionalis, Schistocerca zapoteca, Dichroplus morosus) were 

 not rare along the road on July 12, but nowhere could I 

 find a single dragonfly, not even at the apparently favor- 

 able crossing of the Reventado. Beyond this crossing, the 

 road ascends steeply for some miles, winding around the 

 hills which form the mountain slope. Indian graves have 

 been found in this vicinity and at Sabanilla, where there are 

 two or three small houses. Seiior Tristan pointed out a 

 hole in the road-side bank from which two gold ornaments 

 had been taken in the construction of the road. 



On July 13 I went a mile beyond Sabanilla to look for the 

 Laguna del Reventado or Laguna del Dirumbo. Some 

 bars were stretched across the end of the road and climbing 

 over these I entered a field with trees and bushes, ascended 

 to a ridge marked with tall oaks and then descended into a 

 flat-bottomed valley between two great divisions of the 

 mountain (Irazu). This valley is an extinct crater of Irazu, 

 although the Danish naturalist Oersted regarded it as a dis- 

 tinct volcano, that of Reventado. Even from Cartago 

 one can see an immense bare place on the southwestern side 

 of the highest mass of Irazu, and now that I was in the val- 



