A PLANTATION IN A TROPICAL. FOREST 111 
one comes upon the plantations. You pass little streams 
issuing from thick undergrowth. At each stream is a little 
group of Indian women washing clothes. At Cordoba the 
India women generally have more than one garment, but 
further south one set of garmeuts seem to suffice them. It 
is altogether a beautiful arrangement, when one has only 
one garment, one can wash it, lay it out to dry on the 
stones, while the washer is having her own bath ; and when 
her ablutions are performed she resumes the garment which 
the sun has meanwhile dried. If in addition, as it some- 
times happens, the same stream further on its course serves 
the city for drinking water, what could be more appropriate 
and economical ? 
A few steps from the main street bring one to the 
coffee plantation. Bordering the roads are miles on miles 
of hedges of the scarlet Hibiscus with its gorgeous blos- 
soms, and, behind these, are a perfect snarl of coffee, 
bananas, orange and lemon trees, sometimes shaded by 
huge trees. I saw one tree as large as a full grown oak, 
one mass of purple bougainvillias; so thick were the 
flowers that one could not see anything of leaves or trunk, 
just a huge mass of flaming purple bloom. 
COFFEE PLANTATION. 
I think that here in the Tierra Caliente it must be the 
easiest place for human beings to live of any place in the 
world. All fruits and vegetables grow here without any 
cultivation. One sees no signs of plowing. Bananas, 
coffee, oranges, lemons, and other fruits you never hear of, 
grow in a perfect tangle, so thick that one can hardly pene- 
trate the grove Here and there, as if dropped at random, 
are little native huts. They can hardly take more than 
two days to build. The frame is of any old sticks, the 
walls of corn-stalks set well apart for air-space. Privacy 
is of no importance where one hasadarkskin. A partition 
partly divides the hut into two rooms, in one of which the 
