ALAJUELA AND THE VOLCANO POAS 339 



miles away, was clearly visible. South and west rose the 

 ridges of Candelaria and Puriscal, behind them the hills of 

 Santa Maria Dota and the great mountains of Herradura. 

 Directly west were the rugged Aguacate mountains and 

 between them and the Herraduras lay the valley of the Rio 

 Grande de Tarcoles, through which we obtained a glimpse 

 of the Pacific. Northwest of El Cerro were the villages of 

 Sarchi, San Pedro de Poas, distinguished by its very long 

 church with a bright red tile roof, and Grecia with a church 

 painted a deep red. This latter edifice was constructed of 

 boiler iron made in Belgium, and bolted together so that it 

 might be turned over on its side by the next earthquake and 

 yet be uninjured — in contrast to its predecessors damaged 

 by this cause. 



We reached the farmhouse at El Cerro at ten-thirty and 

 decided to look over the finca before breakfast. My aneroid 

 gave the altitude here as 3850 feet, while at El Brazil before 

 our departure this morning it stood at 3100. We rode 

 through the coffee fields and sugar-cane plantings, and along 

 the edge of second growth woods, down to the "trapiche" 

 or sugar-boiling establishment on the bank of the Rio Car- 

 acha. This building and its equipment and the clearing of 

 the woods in which it and the surrounding cane-fields lay 

 had all been built or made by Mr. Clark since January. 

 "Building" is perhaps too large a word, for the structure 

 had no walls, being merely a roof supported on wooden 

 beams rough-hewn out of the removed forest trees. When 

 we arrived, cut lengths of sugar-cane were being fed to a 

 crusher whose essential parts were metal cylinders with 

 transverse ridges and grooves on the outer surface, which 

 pressed the juice out of the cane. One man pushed the 

 canes in, another on the opposite side removed the crushed 

 cane. The juice dropped to the lower part of the machine 

 from which it was carried by an iron pipe to large iron pans 



