216 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVIII 
made glad the waste places, fairly excited us by their triumphant notes of 
color ; low cactus trees held the eye as landscape centers, and great walls, twice 
our height, yellow with bloom, fairly radiated sunlight. Cactus Camp we 
dubbed our night’s camp for it was beside an eight to ten acre patch of solid 
yellow flowered prickly pear. 
In one cactus bush, oddly enough, a wood rat was sitting in an old Thrash- 
er’s nest that he had fixed over for himself. Another wood rat had decorated 
its house with one of Mr. Bailey’s small traps, a rare specimen for its museum! 
On one side of camp was a small slough that would have been tempting for a 
swim had it not been for the alligator slides on its banks. The soft mud of the 
roads here was marked up with tracks of turtle, deer, and armadillo, and the 
ground in many places covered with miniature toads. 
From the cactus strip we drove down through coast marshes, really river 
flats extending along both sides of the Rio Grande, where numerous small Am- 
modramuses kept flying up from the marsh grass, buzzing low over the tufts 
to drop down again out of sight. 
After our long journey through country whose occasional houses were 
Mexican hackells, when approaching Brownsville we looked twice at an un- 
familiar appearing building and then exclaimed, “Why, that house has boards 
on it!” so quickly had our eyes accepted Mexican standards. Fresh from the 
prairie with eyes trained to enjoy soft colors we came to a Mexican house 
whose dull pink wall harmonized well with its grape vine trellis, and the adjoin- 
ing pink-walled chapel with its cross standing on the ground beside it. As we 
drove by a pretty little Senorita ran out and pointing to the road with a volley 
of Spanish held up three fingers. When we failed to comprehend, she grew 
embarrassed and ran back to the house full of shy laughter, but a guess that 
she was sent to collect the toll gate fare finally saved the situation. 
As we entered Brownsville, May 1, after a hundred and eighty miles of 
level prairie, the jocose old Texan called out, “I can’t see the town for these 
vere plegged houses!” Mexican hackells and palmetto roofed sheds and brush 
corrals were found in the heart of the town, but a public school building with 
piazzas running around two stories, told of the white population. A boy with 
a sling shot shooting Eave Swallows from a large colony nesting about a 
building had a modern air, and girls in shirt waists on bicycles offset Senoritas 
with blue or black rebozas over their heads. The principal industry of the town 
was apparently Mexican drawn work, though the manes and tails of the horses 
had been cut off by the makers of Mexican hair work! 
A small pink frame house with pink pillars was pointed out as the birth- 
place of the Mexican Republic, for here in his early days Porfirio Diaz had 
lived and planned the Mexican revolution. A larger house next door with 
white pillars and an air of prosperity was pointed out as the second home of 
the man with the iron hand. 
In Brownsville, be it noted, no English Sparrows were seen. A number 
of native birds were found, among them the Buzzard, the Mexican Crested Fly- 
catcher, Jackdaws, Martins, Barn and Eave Swallows, Mockingbirds and Titmice. 
From Brownsville we ferried across the Rio Grande to Matamoras, the 
river, which was rising rapidly, swirling around cutting its banks at such a 
rate that it was plain to see how it had cut its way down from Rio Coloral. On 
both sides of the river the chief crops were then cotton, corn, and sugar cane, 
but oranges, lemons, bananas, and guavas were also seen growing. Both 
