SU RUB RES AND OROTINA 389 



country there were still witches, but the government had so 

 shadowed them that they were very shy about appearing 

 as such. A typical example of their advice is the following: 

 — a man consulted a witch to know how he could ride an 

 unbroken horse without being thrown. She told him to call 

 the next morning, when he received two dried leaves with 

 the following directions. "Tie your horse so that he cannot 

 jump. Get on and put one of these leaves between each 

 knee and the saddle and press the leaves tightly against 

 the saddle. Then have some one untie the horse and just 

 as long as the leaves are pressed against the saddle you can- 

 not be thrown." The man followed the witch's advice 

 but evidently did not press hard enough to bring out the 

 magic of the leaves for he was thrown and broke his arm, 



upon which he sued the witch but unsuccessfully. 



********* 



Around the edge of the clearing were many orange trees. 

 Directly in front of the house and perhaps seventy-five 

 feet away were two huge trees, one a higueron, the other a 

 guapinol. The fig was in the act of losing its leaves, which 

 it does twice a year, and was now half bare, as every gust 

 brought down a shower of them, stiff and leathery. The 

 "guapinol" has compound leaves of two leaflets, each leaflet 

 having one straight and one convex edge. The straight 

 edges of the two being close together and parallel, a sym- 

 metrical whole is produced. In the preceding chapter we 

 have mentioned the white flowers of this tree in April near 

 Atenas station. At Surubres in October the thick woody 

 pods, three to four inches long, were in evidence. Such a 

 pod (from near Liberia in Guanacaste) gathered in January, 

 1910, and kept whole and dry, weighs two ounces after nearly 

 five years. 



Except where it had been cleared and cropped, the country 

 was heavily wooded with valuable timber trees. Left stand- 



