122 RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 



the trail, and suddenly leaping to one side. I stayed with her every 

 time, and am still just as much surprised at it as she -was. 



Our first visit was to Ixtal, where I again had a chance to thank 

 M,r. Adams for his earlier helpfulness, and also to meet his right hand 

 man, Mr. Stewart. It was to my mind the hottest day we had experi- 

 enced, when we finally reached the ridge upon which the plantation 

 buildings were located. By that time I was getting to be somewhat 

 of a connoisseur in rubber trees, and so, after the noon breakfast, was 

 glad to accompany Mr. Adams on a tour of inspection. Here were 

 some two hundred and fifty acres planted to rubber, the oldest trees 

 being four years, and the total number about one hundred and fifty 

 thousand. 



The land was very similar to that at La Buena Ventura, and the 

 growth about the same, although in a part of the plantation the trees 

 seemed to be a little taller. Latex flowed from them all abundantly, and 

 my guide said that he had never found one that did not show plenty of 

 milk. In discussing this question, Mr. Adams told of an Australian 

 scientist who had been in that region, and who claimed that there were 

 three native Castilloa species, only one of which was a rubber producer. 

 They all looked alike, so he said, and the difference in them could only be 

 detected by a careful examination of the cellular structure of the leaf. 

 He said further that he uprooted eighty per cent, of his own first year's 

 planting, because he did not know this. When he finally did get the 

 right tree big enough to tap, it bled so freely that he was obliged to 

 stop the cuts with clay, else it would have bled to death. We were able 

 to assure Mr. Adams that this was not credible, to which he agreed. 



One of the officials of Ixtal, Dr. Butcher, has a very pretty home 

 not far from the plantation headquarters, at which we called on our 

 way back. The Doctor and his wife received us hospitably, and while 

 the others chatted on neighborhood topics, the head of the house took 

 me out and showed me the skin of a big snake that he had just killed. 

 Now one of the common dreads that the tenderfoot carries with him 

 in the tropics is that of snakes. It would be folly to believe that 

 there is no danger from them, when one considers the impenetrable 

 jungles and the conditions that nature has prepared for an ideal reptilean 

 existence. As a matter of fact, however, during the whole of my trip 

 I did not see a single live snake, big or little. I did see the skins of 

 some very sizeable ones nailed to walls of the planters' houses, such as 

 that which Dr. Butcher showed me, but even those are rare. The 

 planters say that this is due to the fact that the woods are full of wild 



