122 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
the trail, and suddenly leaping to one side. I stayed with her every 
time, and am still just as much surprised at it as she was. 
Our first visit was to Ixtal, where I again had a chance to thank 
Mr. Adams for his earlier helpfulness, and also to meet his right hand 
man, Mr. Stewart. It was to my mind the hottest day we had experi- 
enced, when we finally reached the ridge upon which the plantation 
buildings were located. By that time I was getting to be somewhat 
of a connoisseur in rubber trees, and so, after the noon breakfast, was 
glad to accompany Mr. Adams on a tour of inspection. Here were 
some two hundred and fifty acres planted to rubber, the oldest trees 
being four years, and the total number about one hundred and fifty 
thousand. 
The land was very similar to that at La Buena Ventura, and the 
growth about the same, although in a part of the plantation the trees 
seemed to be a little taller. Latex flowed from them all abundantly, and 
my guide said that he had never found one that did not show plenty of 
milk. In discussing this question, Mr. Adams told of an Australian 
scientist who had been in that region, and who claimed that there were 
three native Castilloa species, only one of which was a rubber producer. 
Thev all looked alike, so he said, and the difference in them could only be 
detected by a careful examination of the cellular structure of the leaf. 
He said further that he uprooted eighty per cent, of his own first year’s 
planting, because he did not know this. When he finally did get the 
right tree big enough to tap. it bled so freely that he was obliged to 
stop the cuts with clay, else it would have bled to death. We were able 
to assure Mr. Adams that this was not credible, to which he agreed. 
One of the officials of Ixtal, Dr. Butcher, has a very pretty home 
not far from the plantation headquarters, at which we called on our 
way back. The Doctor and his wife received us hospitably, and while 
the others chatted on neighborhood topics, the head of the house took 
me out and showed me the skin of a big snake that he had just killed. 
Now one of the common dreads that the tenderfoot carries with him 
in the tropics is that of snakes. It would be folly to believe that 
there is no danger from them, when one considers the impenetrable 
jungles and the conditions that nature has prepared for an ideal reptilean 
existence. As a matter of fact, however, during the whole of my trip 
I did not see a single live snake, big or little. I did see the skins of 
some very sizeable ones nailed to walls of the planters’ houses, such as 
that which Dr. Butcher showed me, but even those are rare. The 
planters say that this is due to the fact that the woods are full of wild 
