4o8 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



The Gulf of Nicoya as seen from the south side of the town 

 is very picturesque, as most of the horizon is bounded by 

 mountain-ridges, the Aguacate Mountains to the east, the 

 Herraduras to the south and the hills of the peninsula of 

 Nicoya to the west. The highest conical peak of the Her- 

 raduras is known on the maps and at Puntarenas as the Vol- 

 can Herradura, but its volcanic character is doubtful. In 

 the gulf are a number of islands with more or less precipi- 

 tous sides, like much of the mainland south of the sandy 

 peninsula of Puntarenas. One of them is the prison island 

 of San Lucas, the buildings on which were clearly visible in 

 the daylight. The mouth of the gulf lies to the south. 



After an eight o'clock dinner we were escorted to the club 

 on the estero side where there was very moderate drinking 

 and story-telling. One of our hosts showed us a human 

 figure made of gold, about two inches long, which had been 

 brought from an Indian cemetery in the region of the Rio 

 Grande de Terraba, in the south of Costa Rica. 



On February 2, 1910, after our return from Guanacaste, 

 Professor Tristan and I walked eastward along the railroad 

 two kilometers from the Puntarenas station and between 

 the tracks and the estero found a mangrove swamp where 

 the soil was firm enough to walk upon. The "palo de sal" 

 trees {Avicennia nitida) here were about fifteen feet high; 

 even at the estero's edge there was no great root develop- 

 ment such as is described on a later page in the account of 

 our voyage up the Tempisque. The ground beneath these 

 trees was covered with little shoots three to five inches high, 

 the air-roots or pneumatophores of the Avicennia, and with 

 small fleshy-leaved plants, Conocarpus erecta. As one went 

 farther from the estero toward the railroad the undergrowth 

 became denser by the appearance of various weeds of 

 greater height. 



In this tract we collected four species of dragonflies. All 



