IN COSTA RICA 197 



appear to believe that so much quicker profit came to the planter through 

 bananas that the rubber plantations were sacrificed to that industry. 



From 1900 onward, quite a number of companies were incorporated 

 for the planting of Castilloa. A planter named Ed. Coles furnished in 

 1902 a list of eleven planters who had put in rubber, all the way from 

 ten to one hundred acres. Some of these plantations, if they had been 

 continued, would have trees that should be at the present time producers 



COCAO PODS AND SCRAP RUBBER FROM WILD TREES. 



of rubber. The questioning of either natives or foreigners on the ground 

 elicited very little information; about all they seemed to know or care 

 about was bananas. From an American planter, however, we learned 

 that Messrs. Hoffenstadt and Gillet, of Banco de la China, have a planta- 

 tion, where they lately tapped six hundred Castilloas which were six or 

 seven years old, getting a pound of rubber from each tree. 



The correspondent also mentioned an American family named Hogan 

 who were planting rubber at the mouth of the Tres Amigos River, which 

 was the beginning of the Costa Rica Development Co., with headquarters 

 at Los Angeles, California. The officers of this company made arrange- 

 ments for us to visit their plantation, but that meant a call at Greytown, 

 Nicaragua, to reach the Tres Amigos River, but we found that to be 

 impossible. This company have twenty-five thousand trees, a little over 

 three years old, and about fifteen thousand two years old, which from 

 the photographs that we secured appear to be in a most excellent con- 

 dition. 



In this connection it is interesting to note the activity of Mr. Th. 

 F. Koschnev, an old time settler on the San Carlos River, and OITC who 



