1894 
Catena©a 
and knew that he had a tiger treed as a hoy had seen it in the morning 
but none of them had sufficient courage to take a gun and kill it. 
As a contrast between the style of Hiring in this country and our 
own, I will cite the ranch where we were yesterday. The owner has 
some thousands of acres of land, at least 200 head of cattle and horses, 
besides some other property. 
His home on the ranch is a mud daubed hut with a thatched roof and 
dirt floor. A couple of rude tables, 3 or 4 rude chairs and stools, a 
rough sleeping bunk and a scanty stock of dishes with no knives and 
forks and but few spoons make up the household furniture. The entire 
place has the appearance of squalid poverty with chickens and dogs 
overrunning everything. In the evening before retiring all of the 
chickens and a number of musoovy ducks were herded into the stain room 
where they were kept regularly at night to keep them from tigeroats 
and other animals. This ranch is typical of thousands of others through 
out central and southern Mexico, the owners of which have sufficient 
property to live comfortably but lack energy and desire to lift them- 
4 - 
selves above the merest necessities of life. In such surroundings they 
rear their children, and one generation succeeds another living and 
dying in brutal ignorance and indifference to all but the animal prompt¬ 
ings and a little formal religion that has the character of fetishism. 
At our new place we secured another deer and then wasted the rest 
M 
of the day in -vain search for others. I found several Sciurus aurso- 
gaster among the trees in the coffee plantation and secured them. In 
c ■* - •" . , 
the evening we rowed out on the lake and sailed away to Cfttqgj&ca again 
leaving the mountain summits behind us covered with wildly flying oloud 
masses that came whirling over the ridge and down toward the lake in 
angry laasses. The sun set and the slsy filled with a haze, that made a 
mysteriously sombre twilight as though nature was pausing for some 
groat convulsion. As darkness came on, the white caps ran about us and 
- 228 
