see that no Pelaez followers enter the city. From this point on one need not say, "This belongs to one of the oil companies," because everything below, above and on the earth belongs to some oil concern. The Lord Cowdray and the Doheny corporations have more than a million acres each.
From this small dock one rides by automobile twenty miles farther into the jungle, over the only wagon road in this part of Mexico. Another launch takes one across Lake Tamiahua to San Geronimo. As one glides through the quiet waters early in the day one sees thousands of flying fish, and at times the horizon is blackened with wild duck. There is so much game and there are so few hunters that this is an undreamed-of paradise.
As the launch swerves toward the dock one sees several hundred Mexican labourers standing about the narrow-gauge railway track, awaiting the departure of the work train for the fields.
Puffing along at eight miles an hour the dummy engine jerks and whines through the jungle to the camp at Juan Casiano. Beside the tracks one sees mahogany and oak trees, banana plants, orange groves, cornfields, and here and there the straw-thatched roof of a peon's home. Men and women are dressed in one-piece garments; many children are naked; others like one boy I saw with his mother's shirtwaist hanging loosely from his shoulders.
Spanish moss, orchids and other plants grow as
