Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/253

Rh tourist is now in the tierra caliente. The houses in the village are made of cane-stalks and thatched chiefly with palm-leaves; but the principal building is of two stories, and built of adobe, with a roof of red tiles. There is a store in the latter, and a fondita adjoining. The accommodations here are primitive, but it is the best place for the traveler to stop at, unless he has letters to the governmental inspector of police, who lives at La Playa, three miles farther on.

There are fields of sugar-cane near by. Bananas and the indigo-plant also grow here. The main occupation of the natives is to collect palm-leaves from the adjoining hacienda, and cut them up in strips, taking the thin fibers for brooms, brushes, etc. The long strips of palm are folded over and packed together with tight cords. They are made into bundles about five feet long and a foot and a half in diameter, and carried to Ario on the backs of men and donkeys. It should be said that there are many porters in this section of the country. They transport mostly pottery and dressed palm-leaves, and travel about twenty miles daily with a load in this warm climate. The author saw a porter without a load walk thirty-one miles in seven and a half hours. He kept up with the writer's horse for the greater part of the distance. There is a native sugar-mill near Tejamanil, where the cane is put in a sort of hopper, and then passed through wooden rollers. The power is furnished by a yoke of oxen attached to a long shaft as in a horse-whim.

The road descends all the way to the hamlet of Puerta de la Playa, containing about a dozen huts, besides the house and store of the inspector of police, Don Francisco de Vega. Indigo (añil) grows in the river-bottom behind Señor Vega's residence. It is a wild bush about four feet high, and has a thin bark. The leaf resembles a fern. The Indians prepare it for the market by pounding the