140 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
dially, and I soon learned that his plantation was an amalgamation of 
three estates ; that it was named after the river on which it was situ- 
ated, and grew both coffee and rubber, the latter being used for shade. 
He had planted both from seed and from nursery stock but favored 
the former when practicable. His trees were from one to five years old, 
and there were about four hundred thousand of them. He, like all 
others, was of the opinion that it was fatal to allow the grass to get 
a foothold among the rubber trees. For this reason, when the rubber 
was planted alone, it was put in from seven to nine feet apart, and as 
a further precaution he was planting betweeen the rows a kind of sweet 
potato known as the “camate,” which covered the ground with a dense 
mat of vines among which the grass would not grow. This brought 
out the store of practical botanical knowledge of my friend, Harvey, who 
recommended the cow pea and the velvet bean for just this purpose, an 
opinion that I found shared by the others, notably Dr. W. S. Cockrell, 
another pioneer planter. 
After a two hours’ ride we turned into Cliichigapa Creek, a deep, 
silent waterway about two hundred feet wide, and ere long we were 
tied up at the wharf that is part of the Rubio estate. As the banks 
are low, a substantial platform some six hundred feet long leads back 
to the bodega, or storehouse. This is a two-story building of brick with 
tiled roof on one side and glass roof on the other, and is something 
that every planter should have. It is, in fact, a dry house for corn and 
beans, and is fitted with air tight bins for the storage of these cereals, 
an effective protection against the omnipresent weevil and equally 
troublesome mold. 
The building that challenged our admiration for its beauty, how- 
ever, and later for its manifest utility, was the two-story dormitory that 
situated on an eminence further back, looked like a planter's mansion. 
On close inspection it was found to contain a dining room and kitchen, 
and sixteen sleeping rooms, all of which opened out on to a broad 
verandah, which was wholly enclosed in wire netting. The partitions 
between the rooms were made of burlap, painted over to give it a finish, 
a very practical and economical plan in a country where matched boards 
bring a high premium. 
To view the plantation proper, it was necessary to have recourse 
to the horse, and after lunch quite a party of us started through the 
typical forest trail towards the cleared and planted land at the further 
side of the estate. At length we emerged into the open and found our- 
selves on a ridge from which we had a view of hundreds of acres of 
