A PLANTATION IN A TROPICAL FOREST 109 
VERA CRUZ. 
Coming by sea the usual port of landing is Vera Cruz. 
This city is about the most uninteresting Spanish town I 
know of, but if one is not familiar with Spanish towns it 
will have its points of interest. ‘There are long trains of 
mules and donkeys, loaded with all sorts of material, stop- 
ping before the doors of fondas, while the driver is having 
his drink. ‘The drivers are dark brown in color, with thin, 
crooked legs, and cased in skin-tight trousers with huge 
hats looking like great mushrooms on very slender stalks. 
Then there are country Indians with loose white duck 
trousers, rolled up to one knee, hanging loose at the other. 
All wear sandals. ‘The most important and characteristic 
citizen of Vera Cruz is the buzzard. On every wall or post 
of vantage the buzzards roost. They are big rusty black 
birds something like turkeys, with blue black rubbery look- 
ing heads. ‘They have an air of gentle sadness and weari- 
ness, a discouraged appearance, as of an old gentlemen ina 
shabby black coat who knows the true hollowness OF pike: 
One can never think of a Spanish American city without 
having a mental vision of mules and buzzards. 
Leaving Vera Cruz in the grey of the morning, you 
first pass through a dry, barren country with little vegeta- 
tion, then at either side of the track the first vegetation to 
be seen is the morning-glory. These increase till a perfect 
carpet of purple and white morning-glories and white moon 
flowers cover the roadside. ‘Then isolated trees appear in 
bloom, in blossom but notin leaf. Long bare stalks of trees 
are crowned with yellow and red flowers, but no leaves. 
They have a most incongruous look as of a woman who 
puts on a picture hat before she has completed her toilet. 
One of the trees with a yellow flower bears a species of 
cotton, better, they say, than that grown on the low 
bushes. 
Then we see fields surrounded by barb wire fences, the 
wires are strung on to rough, crooked stakes, which look as 
