SANTA CLARA 289 



As usual the farmhouse had verandas on both floors run- 

 ning completely around the house. From the veranda on 

 which my room opened, one looked down almost directly 

 on the Guacimo River, the constant roar of its waters usu- 

 ally making me think it was raining. Following the river 

 upstream (south) the eye passed over the forest to the im- 

 posing crest of Turrialba; the other three volcanoes could 

 not be as well seen here as from Salvador. 



Mr. Stable and Mr. Blair (Assistant Manager, a Harvard 

 graduate of 1908) were about to go into the bananas on 

 horseback and offered to show me a trail into the forest. 

 They offered me a horse also but I declined it, knowing that 

 in all probability I would frequently want to go where a 

 horse could not or where it would be in the way. 



At all the banana farms there run off from the main 

 railroad tracks into the plantations, spurs which form right 

 angles to the main tracks and are parallel to each other. 

 To-day we followed the main track a short distance west 

 from Guacimo farmhouse and then north along Spur i. 

 Workmen (negroes chiefly) were busy — Sunday seemed to 

 be no different from other days here — cutting bunches of 

 bananas, loading them on mules, bringing the loaded animals 

 to certain points on the spur where the fruit was piled up 

 on banana leaves laid on the ground and finally covered with 

 the same when the pile was complete. The bananas are cut 

 while still green at stages known as "three-quarters" or 



three-quarters full" and much depends on the judgment of 

 the cutter in selecting fruit just at these stages. If cut at a 

 younger stage the fruit will not ripen when it reaches the 

 United States or Europe, if cut a little riper it will spoil 

 before it reaches its destination. Here and there along the 

 spur were bunches with some yellow and consequently ripe 

 bananas. These were rejected and left to rot. I ate some 

 of these ripe bananas and could not find that they differed 



