RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
! 5 2 
clump, clump, clump, along the passage between the cots came a heavy 
tread. Peeping out from between the mosquito bars, I saw a man clad 
only in heavy boots, tramping up and down the room. The Major 
discovered him at the same time, and wrathfully inquired what he was 
about. “Just taking exercise,*’ was the reply. Then really the Major 
let himself out. It was truly a rhetorical masterpiece that he delivered 
himself of, and the offender at last reluctantly agreed to put off his 
constitutional until the morrow, and went back to bed. 
It was still raining when we awoke, and we sat around all the 
forenoon waiting for the train, or for better weather. It was then that, 
looking at the passing monos , I had a chance to see the native raincoats 
of cane and cocoa fiber that are the only mackintoshes the Indians use. 
They look far better and cleaner in a photograph than otherwise, and 
rubber manufacturers in the States need not fear that rubber markets 
will ever seriously seek them. 
At two o’clock that afternoon, as it was raining only a little, we 
loaded our belongings on a mono, and started to walk the track to the 
railroad camp, twelve kilometers away. We got there finally, boots covered 
with mud, damp, perspiring, and weary, and were welcomed to the 
engineer’s quarters that consisted of five box cars fitted up as dwellings, 
full of material comforts, and inhabited by several young and friendly 
Americans. 
The head of this engineering household was Mr. F. M. Ames, 
chief engineer of the Vera Cruz and Pacific Railway, who has for 
seventeen years been at work railroad building, all the time in the 
tropics. Indeed, he headed the corps that surveyed the National Tehuan- 
tepec road, cutting his way through the densest sort of jungle, and 
establishing camps where now are thriving settlements. Mr. Ames 
knew the country, the people, and the animals, and we were soon 
launched into talk about the wild dwellers of the forest. Of the cat 
tribe, there are quite a number of large and active specimens. The 
leader of all these is the ounce, or as the natives call it, the tigre, and 
next to him come a great variety of spotted cats, diminutive specimens 
of the jaguar tribe. They never attack man, and when hunted invariably 
take to a tree, although before doing so they often stop and finish a 
dog or two, which they are fully capable of doing. They are more or 
less of a nuisance about plantations as they have a great fondness for 
turkeys and chickens. 
Many of the smaller mammals of the temperate zone are also very 
common, such as foxes, rabbits, skunks, squirrels, black and brown, and 
