140 RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 



dially, and I soon learned that his plantation was an amalgamation of 

 three estates ; that it was named after the river on which it was situ- 

 ated, and grew both coffee and rubber, the latter being used for shade. 

 He had planted both from seed and from nursery stock but favored 

 the former when practicable. His trees were from one to five years old, 

 and there were about four hundred thousand of them. He, like all 

 others, was of the opinion that it was fatal to allow the grass to get 

 a foothold among the rubber trees. For this reason, when the rubber 

 was planted alone, it was put in from seven to nine feet apart, and as 

 a further precaution he was planting betweeen the rows a kind of sweet 

 potato known as the "camate," which covered the ground with a dense 

 mat of vines among which the grass would not grow. This brought 

 out the store of practical botanical knowledge of my friend, Harvey, who 

 recommended the cow pea and the velvet bean for just this purpose, an 

 opinion that I found shared by the others, notably Dr. W. S. Cockrell, 

 another pioneer planter. 



After a two hours 7 ride we turned into Chichigapa Creek, a deep, 

 silent waterway about two hundred feet wide, and ere long we were 

 tied up at the wharf that is part of the Rubio estate. As the banks 

 are low, a substantial platform some six hundred feet long leads back 

 to the bodega, or storehouse. This is a two-story building of brick with 

 tiled roof on one side and glass roof on the other, and is something 

 that every planter should have. It is, in fact, a dry house for corn and 

 beans, and is fitted with air tight bins for the storage of these cereals, 

 an effective protection against the omnipresent weevil and equally 

 troublesome mold. 



The building that challenged our admiration for its beauty, how- 

 ever, and later for its manifest utility, was the two-story dormitory that 

 situated on an eminence further back, looked like a planter's mansion. 

 On close inspection it was found to contain a dining room and kitchen, 

 and sixteen sleeping rooms, all of which opened out on to a broad 

 verandah, which was wholly enclosed in wire netting. The partitions 

 between the rooms were made of burlap, painted over to give it a .finish, 

 a very practical and economical plan in a country where matched boards 

 bring a high premium. 



To view the plantation proper, it was necessary to have recourse 

 to the horse, and after lunch quite a party of us started through the 

 typical forest trail- towards the cleared and planted land at the further 

 side of the estate. At length we emerged into the open and found our- 

 selves on a ridge from which we had a view of hundreds of acres of 



