ISTHMUS OF TEHUANTEPEC 
1 1 £ 
SECOND LETTER. 
A Prosperous Private Plantation — Hunting for Barren Rubber Trees— 
Planting in Favorable and Unfavorable Locations — Conditions for Successful 
Planting — The Dry and Rainy Seasons — Visits to Neighboring Plantations— 
Ixtal — Snakes — La Junta — The Agricultural Mozo— Negro Laborers — A 
Midnight Ride — Freedom from Plant Pests. 
T HE site of the plantation, La Buena Ventura, five years ago 
was virgin forest. At that time Mr. James C. Harvey and his 
son, Clarence, purchased for themselves and their associates, (a 
private corporation), one thousand acres of land and prepared to develop 
it along the most practical lines. When the senior Mr. Harvey 
came to Mexico, it was with the idea of planting coffee, but after months 
of study and a personal inspection of most of the Isthmus country, he 
decided that India-rubber offered the best opportunity for profit, and 
therefore he has turned the larger part of his land into a plantation of 
Castilloa elastica. I am enlarging upon this trifle because, to my cer- 
tain knowledge, the gentleman under consideration is not only an expert 
horticulturist and botanist, but has studied tropical agriculture in Cen- 
tral and South America, and in the East Indies and West Indies, and 
beyond this he and his associates offered no stock for sale, but went into 
the business to make money out of their own investment of capital, 
energy, and knowledge. Such a plantation must, without fail, give the 
visitor the best possible view of the practical end of the business. There 
are, of course, many such private estates in the tropics, but it happened 
that this was the one that I knew most of, and to visit which I had a most 
cordial invitation. 
Here I was, therefore, installed in the palm thatched house, with 
its earthern floor and bamboo walls, that for five years had been the 
home of these hardy pioneers. The domicile was situated at one end 
of a long ridge, on each side of which, with a rare eye to effect, were 
planted gorgeous flowering and foliage plants, and trees valuable for 
fruit and for ornament. Very modestly the presiding genius showed 
me sixty-five different species of palms, probably the largest collection 
in the Americas. Not only were there palms native to the tropical parts 
of America, but there were specimens from Java, Ceylon, New Guinea, 
Queensland, the Fiji Islands, New South Wales, and a score of other 
remote places. These were gathered, not as part of the planting proposi- 
