168 



ways, speaking an unfamiliar tongue, and acting in unfamiliar 

 ways. The streets are not only crowded with people, but with 

 donkeys, horses, and mules, many of them bearing panniers of 

 charcoal, fodder, ice, milk, fruits, and vegetables. 



The market of Jalapa is very interesting and contains a pro- 

 fusion of interesting tropical products which are brought in from 

 the surrounding country and exposed for sale in small booths, 

 or on the ground, by native men, women, and children. Much of 

 it is of poor quality and undersized, as though grown in sterile 

 soil or with little cultivation. This is very noticeable in the 

 case of cocoanuts, peanuts, and tomatoes, the last especially 

 being invariably small, deeply creased, and badly flavored. 



The variety and abundance of flowers, ferns, mosses, and 

 bright-colored foliage plants in the primeval forest surrounding 

 Jalapa is bewildering. Here are tree-ferns thirty feet in height, 

 with wide-spreading fronds representing the very perfection of 

 grace and beauty in leaf-structure; while hundreds of smaller 

 ferns adorn the forest floor. Not only is the ground covered 

 with vegetation, but every tree is a garden, where vines, brome- 

 liads, and orchids, as well as tree-loving ferns, mosses, fungi, and 

 lichens make their home. Jalapa has long been a favorite resort 

 for the collector of medicinal plants and rare orchids, fungi, etc. 

 The familiar jalap of the older doctors was a powerful cathartic 

 derived from a vine of the morning-glory family known as 

 Ipomoea Jalapa, and sarsaparilla is likewise obtained from Smilax 

 medica, the Mexican relative of our common cat-brier. Vanilla 

 is extracted from long, highly-flavored beans, which are the 

 fruits of an orchid common about Jalapa. 



Orchids, of which there are over ten thousand known species, 

 have always attracted attention because of their fantastic shapes 

 and colors, their peculiar mode of life, and the difhculty of collect- 

 ing and cultivating them. Fifty years ago, men were scouring 

 tropical jungles and braving fevers, wild animals, and wilder men 

 to secure rare and unusual kinds, some of which brought fabulous 

 prices. Since methods of growing them in conservatories have 

 been fairly well worked out, it is not necessary to replenish 

 them every year as formerly, and the attention of orchid lovers 



