72 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



of a larger growth. So many failures at colonizing 

 people from the north in these hot southern lands had 

 come to my notice that I had become skeptical of its 

 successful accomplishment in any instance; yet here 

 in the tropics were the bobwhites, essentially a group 

 of the temperate regions, living as cheerfully as pos- 

 sible, and upsetting my preconceived ideas. 



"After passing some time in this district we hired 

 an oxcart one evening, and were trundled across the 

 plains to the coast during the cool hours of the night. 

 There, on the sandy shore, we waited ten days for a 

 steamer, which finally carried us back to Tehuantepec. 

 From this place a railroad crosses the Isthmus to the 

 port of Coatzacoalcos, on the Gulf of Mexico, and we 

 took advantage of it to reach the eastern coast. Coat- 

 zacoalcos is a curious little town, destined to play an 

 important part in the development of southern Mexico 

 and western Guatemala. It is one of the few places 

 in Mexico where small frame houses are the prevail- 

 ing style, and reminds one more of some small mining 

 camp in the Far West than of a seaport on the Gulf 

 of Mexico. Here, where yellow fever, malaria and 

 other ills stalk about, according to the season, we 

 heard of howling monkeys, jaguars, tapirs, and other 

 tropical creatures with which we still desired to be- 

 come more familiar. For this purpose we ascended 

 the Coatzacoalcos River about twenty miles, to the 

 town of Minatitlan, a place once noted for its enor- 

 mous trade in Spanish cedar and dyewoods. We re- 

 mained here some days, in the midst of the coast low- 



