May 10, 1 893. J 



Garden and Forest. 



203 



Though the profit is slow in coming- in, it is found, as we find 

 it here, to pay in tlie long run. Tlie seedUngs, a year old, are 

 planted at the rate of 13.000 to 14,000 to the acre. They are 

 first pruned in the seventh year; afterward every two years, 

 the trimming paying the expense. At the end of twenty years 

 they are cut for hop-poles ; at twenty-five years for supports 

 for galleries in coal and other mines. In fifty years they fur- 

 nish timber for small buildings, and then the land is finally 

 cleared off and regular cultivation is begun, the soil being by 

 that time fit for working. Poor lands treated in this way are 

 estimated to yield an annual product of four or five dollars a 

 year per acre during the process. 



The ancient method of treating the heath, which was intro- 

 duced into Holland some two centuries ago, was copied from 

 the Tartars, who have practiced it from time immemorial on 

 the plains of Asia. This consists in burning the sod over vast 

 tracts at once. At times this is done to such an extent that the 

 air is filled with smoke for hundreds of miles, as in the burn- 

 ing of our great forests. After this, the ground is merely har- 

 rowed and sown in buckwheat or other grain, of which the 

 product is twelve or fifteen bushels to the acre. The land thus 

 treated can be cultivated for about seven years, yielding for 

 the first three years a good harvest. Then the crop begins to 

 fall off, and in three or four years more it dwindles to little or 

 nothing, and the land is abandoned. After resting for twenty 

 years, it is found to be in a suitable condition to burn again. 

 In Asia the Tartars wander back and forth over the immense 

 steppes of lower Siberia and northern India, moving to an- 

 other tract when one becomes exhausttd. These wandering 

 races have been known to remote ages, and isolated bands of 

 them drift into Europe and form a valuable proportion of the 

 laboring population of Russia. But in the rest of Europe, and 

 more especially in dimmutive Holland, these larger features 

 of heath-cultivation are now wanting. 



These pictures of struggling husbandry on sterile soils are 

 by no means without their use. They afford an instructive 

 lesson to the patient cultivator of stubborn and unproductive 

 lands, who may learn from them that, however great his 

 drawbacks, there are other people with greater ones. They 

 teach, also, that there is no piece of soil so bad that it cannot 

 by skill and industry be made to produce some kind of a crop 

 which will repay its possessor for exercising his intelligence in 

 its manasrement. 



Notes of Mexican Travel. — III. 



ON THE TAMPICO BRANCH — CONTINUED. 



'T'HE hacienda of Tamasopo is situated on the second bench 

 * above the lowlands bordering the Gulf, at an elevation of 

 1,000 feet. It is in the zone of greatest rainfall. The winds, 

 heavily laden with moisture, which arise from the Gulf, are re- 

 pelled from the heated lowlands, to precipitate on these moun- 

 tains torrents of rain, as their temperature is lowered by their 

 ascending into cooler regions of the air. Yet the temperature 

 of Tamasopo, though a little lower than that of the coast, 

 is still a tropical heat ; and, from conditions of so great 

 heat and moisture results a vegetation of great luxuriance. 

 The forests, composed of numerous species, are thick, the 

 undergrowth beneath them is dense, and trees and shrubs are 

 bound together by clambering vines to form an almost im- 

 penetrable jungle. Each large tree, with huge spreading 

 branches and leaning trunk, it may be, becomes a garden of 

 plants. On its rough, mossy surface root Ferns, Orchids, 

 Bromeliads and Cactuses ; and, lifted thus into the air and 

 light, they thrive apace. Not epiphytal plants alone may be 

 seen in such situations, but almost any herb or shrub, even, 

 which grows in the neighboring soil. Thus, on the branches 

 of Oaks, and twenty feet above the soil, I have seen in flower 

 rows of Dahlias, Begonias and other plants. 



The most abundant tree of these tropical forests is doubt- 

 less a Fig, Ficus Segovise, with smooth, gray bark, and often 

 of vast size, especially when growing beside streams. Its 

 leaves are lanceolate, smooth and shining ; and it sheds at 

 different periods throughout the year profuse crops of fruit, 

 which is round, and varies from three-fourths of an inch to an 

 inch and a half in diameter. It is upon the fruit of this and 

 other Wild Figs that pigs, peccaries and monkeys largely sub- 

 sist. The most common Oak here is Ouercus germana, which 

 bears acorns two inches long. Dendropanax arboreus, sym- 

 metrical in form and bearing attractive foliage and fruits, is 

 one of the most interesting trees here ; and Banara Mexicana is 

 pretty when covered with white berries. But to enumerate all 

 the arborescent species of these forests would be tedious, were 

 it possible; and I will only mention Xanthoxylum Pringlei, 

 Watson, and Clethra Pringlei, Watson, as discoveries. 



If it were hardly possible to mention all the trees of this re- 

 gion, what can I say for the shrubs and endless variety of 

 herbs of Las Canoas and Tamasopo, and of the long canon 

 connecting these, the pursuit of which occupied me for many 

 weeks of two summers ? I am sensible that the species acces- 

 sible from the railroad, which has opened a way through 

 mountains and jungles, is far from being exhausted. 



From Tamasopo to the station of Rascon the road threads 

 valleys and runs between wooded hills and a river-bank. The 

 clear blue water shows through gaps of the thickets covering 

 the river-banks, and here we first see clumps of a giant Bam- 

 boo, in each clump five to ten stalks, every stalk four to six 

 inches thick, a gracefully spreading plume twenty to forty feet 

 high. Scattered Palm-trees soon appear, and as we near Ras- 

 con we are running through a forest of Palms, straight, slen- 

 der shafts, thirty feet high, bearing spreading heads of broad 

 leaves. Beyond Rascon, as far as Micos, are more Palm- 

 forests and Bamboos, and rivers and swamps and jungles 

 alternating with open meadows, which lead back between hills 

 whose sides are grassy glades and whose summits are covered 

 with Oaks. Meadows and glades and mountain-tops — all are 

 deer-parks ; an-d the iVIexican tiger, the puma, prowls through 

 the less-frequented wilds of all this region. The few haciendas 

 being at a distance from the railroad, few people are seen ; 

 rarely there is seen a hut, a thatch of palm-leaves raised on 

 posts, the sides being left open, or, at best, being filled in with 

 wattles of cane-stems. 



At Micos we are beside a larger river, the Conception, and 

 among other mountains. Buffing crags, 2,000 feet high, hang 

 over us on either side. Between these, and above the roaring- 

 river, we pass through the mountain-notch to descend to the 

 lowest bench of the highlands. As we emerge through the 

 gateway our eyes turn from the wide wooded plain before us 

 to look back on the river and see it plunging through a mile of 

 its course in most beautiful cascades, where twenty white cata- 

 racts alternate with reaches of still water. To descend to the 

 river-side and stand amid the spray and roar of some of the 

 grander falls, to look into the still, limpid pools of green-hued 

 water, to observe the flood, where greatest force is spent, 

 making deposits of calcareous tufa, thus building up the rim 

 of its pools, and from the verge of the falls projecting chutes 

 to convey the falling torrents further and further out — the 

 more intimate acquaintance thus gained yields deeper interest. 

 Wet vvalls in the spray of the falls were 'hidden by masses of 

 Aspidium trifoliatum ; and out of the tufa was growing, mosfiy 

 submerged, a strange plant, Erigeron heteromorphus, Rob', 

 n. sp. Its long and finely dissected leaves moved in the flow- 

 ing water like tresses of hair, and its abundance contributed to 

 the green hue of the water. 



Crossing the last bench, mostly covered with small trees and 

 shrubs, Croton eleagnoides, Watson, n. sp., being the most 

 numerously represented of these, and, on account of its sil- 

 very foliage, the most conspicuous, we come to the last 

 mountain-gap, and pass through it by a tunnel in one of the 

 cafion walls. Now we are on the side of a low mountain, and 

 are overlooking the lowland plain, which is about fifty miles 

 wide from the mountains to the coast, and on this side is only 

 two or three hundred feet above sea-level. 



Two or three miles below the last tunnel, where the grade 

 has nearly reached the plain, we come to the fountain caves 

 of the Choy River. This spot has been a favorite haunt of 

 mine ; and not a few have been the new or choice plants 

 yielded me by its ledges of lime-rock. An iron bridge spans 

 a chasm in the mountain-wall. Through chambers iii the 

 rock comes the roar of waters far beneath us. We look down 

 through an opening under the railroad-ties and see a half- 

 lighted cave and a dark pool occupying its floor. From the 

 railroad we scramble down a steep path over the rocks, and 

 enter the principal cave. We creep down its shelving ledges 

 among Ferns and stand beside the pool. On its farther side, 

 in the inner wall of the cave, open the dark caverns, from 

 which this river issues — " caverns measureless to man." We 

 feel as though we had come upon the river Styx, and are in- 

 clined to watch the inner portals for the coming of Charon and 

 his skiff. Under a low, broad archway and over a rocky bed 

 the river tumbles out into the sunlight. We clamber back out 

 of the cave and get down to the river to find its waters clear 

 and pure, but of a strange blue color. Other caves of the series 

 we try to explore, but find them inaccessible, and only suc- 

 ceed in disturbing their occupants, which circle around us, 

 screaming hideously. In the openings of the upper chambers, 

 however, we notice sticks laid by, which indicate that the 

 natives let each other down from above by means of ropes 

 and secure the young birds to sell. In the limestone forma- 

 tion of these mountain-ranges ^ch caves are common. There 

 is a most interesting one with several grand, high-vaulted rooms 



