144 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
FOURTH LETTER. 
Across the Isthmus — Plantation “San Francisco” — View of the “Ubero” 
and “La Crosse” Plantations — The Great Tehuantepec Plain — At the El 
Globo — Attacked by a Vampire — The Zapotaco Women — Dogs and Fleas — 
Sauna Cruz — Back to Santa Lucretia — Mexican Justice — Sleeping Under 
Difficulties — A Night at a Railroad Camp — A Tapir Hunt — The Persistent 
“Pinoleo” — Achotal Again — Journeying North — Cattle Ranching — Taxes — 
Cordoba and Orizaba — Mexico City — A Look Backward — The Cow Pea and 
Velvet Bean. 
T HE last letter of this series left us just boarding the train at Coat- 
zacoalos for the journey across the Isthmus to the City of Tehuan- 
tepec. The journey did not take the whole of the month that 
has intervened, but it took long enough in all co nscience, yet it was not 
without interest. Almost at once I struck up an acquaintance with a 
German, named De Verts, who, I soon learned, owned the plantation 
San Francisco up in the Dos Rios region. His plantings were of 
coffee and Castilioa, and of the latter he had some sixty thousand trees 
two and one-half years old. These were planted seven and one-half 
feet apart one way, ami fifteen feet apart the other, with coffee between. 
His trees averaged about eight inches in diameter. From his descrip- 
tion the stand appeared to be an excellent one. 
After his departure a friend promised to point out to me a man, 
who more than any other down that way, was making “easy money” — 
none other than a traveling dentist who finds his patients only among 
the natives. He goes from village to village doing a rushing business 
at great profit. It is said that many who have no trouble at all with 
their teeth' have them filled in order to show the gold, and that they 
never weary of grinning, with that end in view. I did not see the 
dentist, for at this juncture we stopped at a station, where on a siding 
was a private car, on the platform of which stood Sir S. Weetman Pear- 
son, the famous English constructor of tropical railroads. We all wanted 
a sight of him, and were rewarded by a brief view of a thick set, deter- 
mined looking Britisher, who had an air of meaning business all the 
time. He was said to be discharging men right and left, and generally 
upsetting the policy of procrastination and inefficiency that had been 
more or less characteristic of the management in the past. 
The National Tehuantepec Railroad is without doubt of great 
