14 6 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
present and prospective value, both to the planters and to the owners. 
Its trains, which run every other day, are always well patronized, and 
it is wonderful how those children of nature, the Indians, enjoy crowd- 
ing into the third class cars, and riding even a few miles. Many of the 
poorer ones save money for months, ride fifty or a hundred miles, and 
contentedly walk back. To them the trains are “flyers/' and the cars 
palatial, but to the white man the many delays, particularly at stations, 
are very irritating. A resident of the country accounted for the long 
waits by stating that an engineer is paid two dollars an hour, and there- 
fore the longer the run, the more he gets. He further intimated that 
if the train got on too fast, steam was allowed to get low, or some of 
the machinery suddenly needed repairs, for which a stop was necessary 
— but the narrator may have been yarning. 
Shortly after noon we passed the handsome plantation house of 
the Boston Ubero Company, and had a good view of the many acres 
of pineapples that they have under cultivation. We also had a good 
view of the land of the Isthmus Rubber Co., a little later, and still 
further on was the La Crosse Plantation Company, which showed many 
acres planted to sugar cane, and considerable rubber. 
Early in the afternoon we passed over the low mountainous ridge 
that separates the Atlantic side from the Pacific, and left behind the 
hot, moist atmosphere that had become somewhat trying, and were in 
a climate bone dry, and seemingly much cooler. We then had a fine 
view of Rincon Antonio, the new railroad town that is rapidly assuming 
shape, and that will give to the workers in the shops a fine, healthy 
climate instead of a fever ridden one. 
Continuing our journey, we next came to the valley of the San 
Geronimo, healthy, cool, free from epidemics, and a little later to the 
vast Tehauntepec plain. Here are more than a million acres of rich 
land as level as a billiard table, covered with a sparse growth of chap- 
parel, and awaiting only irrigation to turn it into a paradise. Nor is 
the water far off, for the mountains, which are in plain sight from the 
train, furnish abundant supply, and every opportunity for huge reser- 
voirs. 
After a stop of twenty minutes at a small station to watch a man 
who was chopping wood — at least that was the only apparent reason — 
we reached our journey’s end, arriving at the city of Tehauntepec two 
hours late. We had elected to stop at the El Globo Hotel while in the city, 
and in that made no mistake, for it is the best there. From the pro- 
prietor’s own advertisement I have it that there are “Rooms facington 
