188 A GLIMPSE OF RUBBER PLANTING 



Everywhere through the broad valleys and up the mountain sides 

 could be seen cleared farms, in many cases fine plantation houses and 

 great coffee estates. The native Costa Rican is perhaps one of the most 

 enterprising and independent of all the Latin Americans. Nearly every 

 man owns a patch of land and cultivates it. The better class speak 

 English and are very friendly to Americans, welcoming them to their 

 country with a manly, prideful air that is extremely taking. 



In the meantime the Ferrocarril Costa Rica was slowly but surely 

 getting us up toward San Jose. The English locomotive was having a 

 tough time of it with the steep grades, and it seemed every now and then 

 as if the pull would be too much and that the heavy train would slip 



TEN MILES OUT OF PORT LIMON. 



back down into the valley. The slow progress, however, gave us every 

 opportunity to examine the track with its iron sleepers, to see where 

 various great landslides had time after time wiped out the railroad and 

 even dammed the swift flowing river; and to enjoy the wonderful semi- 

 tropical luxuriance of the giant trees festooned with vines and studded 

 with epiphytes; to look down into deep gorges, up the sides of steep 

 mountains, and across broad and fertile valleys, so photographed the 

 scenery in one's mind that the snail's pace of the train was not only 

 not objected to, but was most welcome. At intervals all the way up were 

 to be seen Castilloa trees, many of which had been tapped in the brutal 

 native fashion, which amounts almost to girdling. At about fifteen 



