158 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
train. While we sat there, one of the mozos roused up, and began to 
talk to my companion. After a time, Mr. Harvey turned to me and 
said : 
“Here is a most remarkable thing; this man was on his way to my 
plantation to get work, when some of the railroad men told him that I 
drove my laborers out in the field early in the morning, hitting them with 
the flat of the machete , that I fed them very poorly, and made them 
sleep in a fenced enclosure that had no roof over it, so he didn't dare 
come. That is the way they try to get our help for themselves.’ 1 ’ 
At length, after what seemed an interminable wait, the train arrived, 
and we got aboard. The train boy had some canned beans and crackers 
from which we made a hearty meal, and then, stretching out on the seats, 
we slept as best we could until we reached the breakfast station at Perez. 
The breakfast was fair, but tbe fruit we bought later was really what 
made life worth living. At every railway station, women and children 
gathered under the car windows with fruits, flowers, native made candies, 
and the great variety of sweet cakes of which both Mexicans and Indians 
are very fond. I got a dozen oranges for ten cents, and they were 
simply delicious. A fruit that I had been very anxious to taste was the 
sapadillo, produced by the tree from which the chicle comes, and, finding 
them on sale at last, I immediately invested. It is about the size of an 
apple, with a skin like the potato, tbe pulp tasting like gelatine filled 
with brown sugar. I also sampled many other fruits. Of them all, as 
might be expected, the banana is the most common, and I observed several 
varieties that are never seen in the States. Some tiny yellow ones, a 
little larger than one's thumb, have an extremely delicate flavor, and are 
delicious. Of this family is a large plantain which is either fried or 
broiled, never being eaten raw, and which is extremely palatable. There 
are a great variety of other fruits which appear at certain seasons, such, 
for example, as the sour sop, a sort of pear with a prickly alligator skin 
hide, and which tastes like sour snow mixed with cotton batting. 
During the forenoon we rode through a country largely given up to 
cattle ranches. Of domestic animals in Mexico, the cattle are perhaps 
the most valuable, and even with the poor strain of stock that is bred, 
many large fortunes come to the owners of the ranches. Besides this, 
those who go into the cattle business have no trouble at all in getting 
help, as the native Mexican is a natural cowboy, and if he has but a pony 
and a big set of spurs, he is willing to work as he is at no other calling. 
Some of the more progressive ranchers are crossing their cattle with 
imported stock, and getting fine results. Most of the rubber planters 
