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168 
en Vega Baja and Manati the railroad passes through a 
aie. pee plain which supports a peculiar vegetation quite un- 
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air slender trunks a more 
in height are so one as to be invisible. At this season of the 
year the warm Caribbean winds laden with moisture come over 
from the south and nearly every day give copious showers, often 
accompanied with brilliant electric displays. On our first horse- 
back ride to Utuado we were treated to a splendid exhibition of 
this sort, wets a caeeule that we were vastly more wet than com- 
b 
fortable, t ificent scenery spread out in the beauti- 
ful Rio Gende de Arecibo whose tortuous valley we followed 
a repaid us for our trouble and the minor annoyance o 
wet clothing iles out of Arecibo we reach the moun- 
tain c ter first a limestone formation with nearly 
perpendicular sides, and later a metamorphic region with corre- 
spondi hanges in th ra. The le valley is one pano- 
a of y; perpendicular cliffs 800 to 1,000 high are 
comm le country is richly c d either with 
native trees along the streams, the ravines that everywhere 
descend from the higher levels, or on the mountain tops, or else 
bulging trunks, c only the Porto Rico species of the 
royal palm (Roystonea Boringuena) or the introduced cocoanut in 
the bottom lands, e cliffs, often perched in the most in- 
r 
tropical fruit-trees in cultivation about the shacks of the natives ; 
