GUANJCASTESANTA CRUZ 445 



on as the road was straight. We did so and In attempting 

 to cross a brook on the "straight" road Professor Tristan's 

 horse, which was leading, mired up to the body. The guide 

 now came up and explained that we must make a detour 

 here! We were then able to cross the brook without further 

 adventure and almost immediately began to ascend some 

 low hills which the guide called Cerros de Gulz(.^). Beyond 

 them we forded the fairly wide Rio de las Canas and fol- 

 lowed It for some distance, most of the way thus far being 

 shaded. Houses occurred here and there; some had walls 

 of upright bamboo or other stems with chinks between the 

 stems, and very high-pitched roofs of palm thatch. Now 

 and then we stopped to collect insects without dismounting 

 from our horses. After crossing the Rio Medio several 

 times we reached Santa Cruz at 11.45. The Commission 

 had preceded us by two days. All of us were lodged in 

 the schoolhouse, a one-story wooden building completed in 

 1908, much less pretentious than that at Liberia but having 

 a fenced-in playground behind. It stood in the middle of 

 the north side of the plaza, which had the two-spired white- 

 washed church on the east side and the one-storied wooden 

 municipal building on the west. 



The schoolhouse, like many other houses in the villages 

 of Guanacaste, had walls a single board in thickness, each 

 board eight to twelve inches wide and with beveled edges 

 fitting over each other to shed rain. There was no interior 

 finishing except that these boards and the completely ex- 

 posed uprights and wooden partitions were planed smooth. 

 There were few if any sawmills in this province and boards 

 were sawn by hand. A squared log — and many of the men 

 can square a log with a thin-edged axe with surprising 

 accuracy and rapidity — was placed across a staging six 

 to seven feet above the ground. One man stood on the stag- 

 ing, one on the ground below, each with one end of a long 



