146 RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 



present and prospective value, both to the planters and to the owners. 

 Its trains, which run every other day, are always well patronized, and 

 it is wonderful how those children of nature, the Indians, enjoy crowd- 

 ing into the third class cars, and riding even a few miles. Many of the 

 poorer ones save money for months, ride fifty or a hundred miles, and 

 contentedly walk back. To them the trains are ''flyers," and the cars 

 palatial, but to the white man the many delays, particularly at stations, 

 are very irritating. A resident of the country accounted for the long 

 waits by stating that an engineer is paid two dollars an hour, and there- 

 fore the longer the run, the more he gets. He further intimated that 

 if the train got on too fast, steam was allowed to get low, or some of 

 the machinery suddenly needed repairs, for which a stop was necessary 

 but the narrator may have been yarning. 



Shortly after noon we passed the handsome plantation house of 

 the Boston Ubero Company, and had a good view of the many acres 

 of pineapples that they have under cultivation. We also had a good 

 view of the land of the Isthmus Rubber Co., a little later, and still 

 further on was the La Crosse Plantation Company, which showed many 

 acres planted to sugar cane, and considerable rubber. 



Early in the afternoon we passed over the low mountainous ridge 

 that separates the Atlantic side from the Pacific, and left behind the 

 hot, moist atmosphere that had become somewhat trying, and were in 

 a climate bone dry, and seemingly much cooler. We then had a fine 

 view of Rincon Antonio, the new railroad town that is rapidly assuming 

 shape, and that will give to the workers* in the shops a fine, healthy 

 climate instead of a fever ridden one. 



Continuing our journey, we next came to the valley of the San 

 Geronimo, healthy, cool, free from epidemics, and a little later to the 

 vast Tehauntepec plain. Here are more than a million acres of rich 

 land as level as a billiard table, covered with a sparse growth of chap- 

 parel, and awaiting only irrigation to turn it into a paradise. Nor is 

 the water far off, for the mountains, which are in plain sight from the 

 train, furnish abundant supply, and every opportunity for huge reser- 

 voirs. 



After a stop of twenty minutes at a small station to watch a man 

 who was chopping wood at least that was the only apparent reason 

 we reached our journey's end, arriving at the city of Tehauntepec two 

 hours late. We had" elected to stop at the El Globo Hotel while in the city, 

 and in that made no mistake, for it is the best there. From the pro- 

 prietor's own advertisement I have it that there are "Rooms facington 



