A VISIT TO RUBBER PLANTATIONS IN NICARAGUA. 
On Board The Sunbeam — December Heat — Meeting a Water Spout — 
Arrival at Bluefields — Up the Escondido — Morning Glory Vines Among the 
Rubber Trees — Devastation of Castilloa by Heavy Rains — Interesting 
Experiments in Tapping — The Manhattan Plantation — Visits to Other 
Rubber Growers— Diseases of the Castilloa— On a Fruiter to New Orleans. 
W E three, the Importer, the Manufacturer, and the Editor, left 
Port Limon, Costa Rica, at 1.30 in the afternoon on a hot, 
tropical December day. The short voyage from Port Limon 
to Bluefields, something like one hundred and fifty miles, was to be 
taken on a small, fifty-two-ton schooner owned by Belanger’s, Incorpor- 
ated, of Nicaragua, and used in trading up and down the coast. The 
wharf at belanger’s. 
schooner was equipped with a gasoline auxiliary which took up most of 
the room aft, and made the rest of it so thick with gasoline fumes that 
it was difficult to stay in the cabin ten minutes at a time, so we lived 
on deck. The vessel was called the Sunbeam and was manned by a 
mixed crew of negroes from the Fortune Islands, San Bias Indians, 
and one Englishman, and was commanded bv a Cayman Islander. 
Starting out against a head wind, our gasoline “kicker” put us 
along at the rate of about four miles an hour, and we sat scorching on 
deck until finally the sun set and we turned in, still on deck, sleeping 
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