NOTES ON SOUTHERN MEXICO 



301 



anything of a similar character yet found 

 in Egypt. 



About seven miles from Cuernavaca is 

 the Indian village of Juitepec, where 

 some of their mysterious customs are 

 still observed. The place has the ap- 

 pearance of a stage setting and the na- 

 tives of the village are like the characters 

 in a play. Each year a strange feast is 

 celebrated in an ancient church and pil- 

 grimages are made to its shrine by na- 

 tives from a number of the outlying 

 districts. 



How these people have preserved their 

 ancient customs through such long peri- 

 ods of time is unexplained. They seem 



THE chief object of our expedition 

 to southern Mexico was to inves- 

 tigate the cotton culture of that 

 region. It had been learned that there 

 was a cotton mill at Providencia, Chia- 

 pas, and that part of the cotton used in 

 the factory was grown locally. As the 

 cotton-boll weevil was known to exist in 

 this region, it became of interest to dis- 

 cover, if possible, why this insect did not 

 prohibit the commercial culture of cotton 

 here as elsewhere in the American trop- 

 ics. It was further planned to cross 

 Chiapas and visit some of the rubber 

 plantations in Tabasco, where the oldest 

 plantations of Central American rubber 

 are known to exist. 



During our stay in Mexico City we 

 made a rather careful study of the mar- 

 kets. There was a comparatively poor 

 display of fruits and vegetables at the 

 time (November), much less than we 

 saw there on our former visit. The most 

 common fruits were bananas, oranges, 

 pineapples, guavas, figs, pawpaws, apples, 

 mamee sapotes, and strawberries. The 



to be in a world by themselves and care 

 little about the outside. The traveler will 

 not regret a visit to these remarkable 

 places, which are all within such con- 

 venient distance of Cuernavaca. 



Altogether Cuernavaca quite fascinates 

 with its mysterious charm and idyllic 

 picturesqueness. Glorying in its atmos- 

 phere of legend and romance, free from 

 care, free from the struggles and vicissi- 

 tudes of a modern world, surrounded by 

 forbidding mountains, which seem to 

 keep eternal vigilance over it, this little 

 pastoral community, the Sun Child of 

 the Sierras, peacefully slumbers and 

 dreams on. 



MENT 



strawberries were of good size and flavor 

 and remain white when perfectly ripe. 



Another fruit very common in the 

 market at this time of the year is the 

 "sapote prieto" ( Diospyros cbcnastcr ) . 

 This fruit was entirely new to us. The 

 flesh is stringy and very dark brown, 

 almost black. It is very unattractive in 

 appearance and the taste is rather in- 

 sipid, but the fruit is very popular with 

 all classes, fair specimens selling at 5 

 cents, Mexican, apiece. Many specimens 

 are entirely seedless, suggesting that the 

 species has been cultivated from remote 

 periods and probably by asexual methods. 

 This fruit was afterwards seen growing 

 at Cuernavaca. The trees were 40 or 50 

 feet high and about one foot in diame- 

 ter. As this species is closely related to 

 our common persimmon and the fine 

 Japanese forms, it may be of interest to 

 form hybrids of these fruits. 



On December 4 we left Mexico City 

 for south Mexico by way of Cordoba 

 and the Vera Cruz and Pacific Railroad. 

 Corn is quite extensively cultivated about 



NOTES ON SOUTHERN MEXICO 



By G. N. Collins and C. B. Doyle, of the U. S. Depart 



of Agriculture 



With Photographs by the Authors 



