112 A PLANTATION IN A TROPICAL FOREST 
baby sleeps in a hammock, and the bedding of the old folks 
is rolled up against the wall. Jn the other room is a table 
with a little fire of charcoal on top ina brick hearth Over 
this is an iron plate on which the woman bakes tortillas 
from Indian meal. As youcome near the hut you hear the 
sound of patting. Itis the woman slapping out the meal 
into thin cakes about the thickness of blotting paper. 
These she puts on the hot plate, They immediately swell up 
to a spherical ball, and she jerks them off into a basket to 
cool for future use. . 
Bananas, coffee, etc., seem to grow just by sticking 
cuttings into the earth. Nature then does the rest, and 
man does the resting. 
Flocks of chickens and turkeys wander in and out of 
the impenetrable tangle of stems and pick a living there. 
Beside each hut are spread out a few mats, and on these are 
spread the coffee berries, drying in the sun, and on each 
pile of coffee sleeps a dog—a yellow dog, very mangy and 
mongrelly looking. No pile of coffee is without its dog. 
You might suppose that the different kinds and flavors were 
due to the amount of chickory that our grocers thought it 
was best for us to have, or to the different species of the 
fruit, but this is all a mistake. The flavor of the coffee 
depends on the nature of the dog that has reposed on it. 
THE FOREST. 
A day’s ride south of Cordoba, where the country nar- 
rows down to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, one comes into 
a wild, rugged country, very sparcely settled, and largely 
covered with virgin forest. In this forest are scattered the 
trees from which India rubber is obtained. The forest is an 
almost impenetrable thicket; huge mahogany, Spanish 
cedars and Ceibas crowd each other in their struggle for 
life. mates that start in the crotches of other trees and 
drop roots to the ground and send up branches, throttle 
their tree hosts to death in the fierce struggle for existence, 
