IN NICARAGUA 



171 



plantation. Here we disembarked, and leaving our luggage to be 

 brought up later, followed a narrow-gauge banana railway up over a 

 little hill through a part of the fifteen-hundred-acre banana plantation 

 of the Cukra Company, and were soon at the house of Mr. Gordon Wal- 

 dron, one of the owners, where we had a bountiful supper and a most 

 interesting chat, chiefly on rubber. After supper, in the bright moon- 

 light, we boarded a flat car drawn by a diminutive engine and rode three 

 miles into the country to the road that led to the Manhattan planta- 

 tion. There saddle horses and a wagon were awaiting us, and as it had 

 suddenly clouded up and begun to rain, the Importer and I got ,on the 

 top of the baggage, preferring to trust ourselves to a wagon rather than 

 a horseback ride through the pitchy darkness. The road was far from 

 smooth, and we got ample exercise before reaching the plantation house. 



WALDRON'S CANADA PLANTATION. 



We did reach it finally, at 11.30, and turning in under mosquito nets, 

 slept like tops. 



At daybreak the whole crowd roused out, and going to the door 

 we found that we were right in the middle of planted rubber. It was 

 on all sides of us, even in the yard. The average age of the trees was about 

 three years and they all looked stocky and thrifty. The soil seemed to be a 

 red, loamy clay, quite porous, with considerable volcanic rock through it, 

 and the country rolling rather than flat. The soil was excedingly deep, 

 as was attested by several wells that had been sunk, the deepest being 

 forty feet, which had not got through that formation. 



That the trees bled very freely, I was able to prove before break- 

 fast, as I walked around and ran my knife into the spongy bark. A little 



