Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/295

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 The figure at the left shows a young strangler, that at the right shows an old one. The tree about which the latter wrapped itself was killed and has rotted away.

Starting the day after our arrival we rode eighteen miles into the interior on mule back to the Cincinnati coffee plantation, the home of Mr. Flye. That ride was wonderful! As we went higher the luxuriance of the vegetation increased and the trail often hugged the brink of a precipice where one could look for miles over the virgin forest and banana plantations below. Like the hunter in the "Lady of the Lake," we

 often paused, so strange the road, So wondrous were the scenes it showed.

We lived at the plantation for a month in a clean little adobe house at an altitude of 4,500 feet. In half a day we could walk down to Minca, at about 2,000 feet, or up to the top of San Lorenzo, 8,300 feet. Beyond the coffee the tropical forest stretched away, unbroken; in one direction to the desert along the coast, in the other toward the snow peaks at the crest of the Sierras. Every afternoon it was cloudy, usually there was rain.