INTRODUCTION. 



All that I said in the introduction of this book, referring to coffee 

 culture in Mexico, applies to India-rubber culture. When in 1872, I 

 made a long trip of inspection to several of the Mexican States for 

 the purpose of studying the agricultural resources of the country and 

 selecting some branch of it which would be pleasant and profitable to ap- 

 ply myself to, together with a desirable location, and visited Soconusco, 

 I was very much struck with the great future of the India-rubber 

 culture, and I became satisfied that it was the most lucrative branch 

 of agriculture that could then possibly be undertaken. 



On that occasion I remained about four months in Soconusco and 

 studied almost exclusively the India-rubber tree, and it seemed to me 

 so promising that I fully made up my mind to undertake a plantation 

 of such trees, and on my return to the City of Mexico, in December, 

 1872, for the purpose of closing my affairs there and moving my resi- 

 dence to Tapachula, the county-seat of Soconusco, I decided to give 

 to my countrymen the benefit of my studies and experience, or rather 

 surmises about India-rubber culture, and I consequently published a 

 paper entitled, ' ' Importance of India- Rubber Culture in the Future of 

 Mexico, ' ' in which I tried to present what I had gathered, and to give 

 a clear idea of the profits of that culture in Mexico, and of the advan- 

 tages of Soconusco for the same. 



My paper on this subject differs from the one on coffee, especially 

 from the fact that when I wrote the latter, coffee raising was an in- 

 dustry already established, and of which one could speak from ex- 

 perience, while India-rubber planting was not in existence anywhere in 

 the world that I knew of, and therefore nobody could lay down with 

 certainty the true principles of the same, and any surmises, however 

 plausible and reasonable, could not be supported by experience. 



On returning to Soconusco in 1873 to make there my permanent 

 abode, I purchased a very desirable piece of land, of about 25,000 

 acres, bounded by the Pacific on the south, and by two large rivers, 

 the Zuchiate on the east, and the Caohuacan on the west, at a distance 

 of about ten miles apart, where a great many India-rubber trees had 



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