212 J YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



gave the corn to Miss R. who cooked some for us, but it was 

 rather hard and not particularly sweet. Miss R. told us 

 it was impossible to grow sugar corn here because as soon 

 as it came above ground each shoot was cut down and car- 

 ried off by the leaf-cutting ants. 



The road to the Reventazon was much used by ox-carts 

 and pack animals, but traffic was often interrupted by land- 

 slides, especially on the zigzags, and places where carts had 

 passed one day were often impassable for them on the next. 

 We first knew the road in June, but in July, December and 

 February, slides blocked it, often in more than one zigzag. 

 Sometimes the soil slipped down leaving clean rock but so 

 gently that the bushes and young trees were undisturbed, 

 still standing green and flourishing, in their normal vertical 

 positions. Sometimes the destruction was wrought by 

 slipping masses of soft rotten stone which uprooted huge 

 trees and sent them down the slope like battering rams, 

 ploughing through the lower zigzags and tearing up still 

 other trees. On the upper zigzags it was often possible to 

 climb over the displaced material blocking the road, but on 

 the lower ones the whole roadbed was sometimes swept 

 away, leaving gaps that were quite impassable for horses 

 and both difficult and dangerous to cross on foot. Occa- 

 sionally our feet dislodged stones and masses of earth and 

 pebbles that went bounding down the hillside in an unpleas- 

 antly suggestive manner. The worst slide we saw was in Feb- 

 ruary and was between two and three hundred feet high. 

 The road was frequently repaired, however. When we went 

 down on April 27 expecting it would be very bad as a result 

 of rains and earthquakes (and remembering its condition 

 on our preceding visits) we found the road cut through 

 the slides. There had also been much clearing and cutting 

 of trees on the sides so that the road was better than it had 

 been for months previous. 



