The Boy Travellers in Mexico / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Northern and Central Mexico, Campeachey, and Yucatan, With a Description of the Republics of Central America and of the Nicaragua Canal

by Thomas Wallace Knox

ORANGE GROVE IN CORDOBA.

Frank asked how soon after a plantation was started the trees would begin to bear.

The gentleman replied that he had seen coffee-trees bearing two years after they were planted, and it was very common to gather fair crops from trees three years old. But they could not be relied upon for a profitable yield until they were four or five years old, and they continue to bear for twenty years. When a plantation is five years old it does not cost much to keep it up, but before that time it is a heavy outlay, with little or slight return.

COFFEE-DRYING.

"You may grow tobacco or bananas between the young coffee-trees when you set them out," he continued, "and the profit from these products will cover a part of your expenses. In fact you should set out enough bananas or plantains to shelter the young plants, which are liable to be injured by the sun and rain and wind in their infancy. The coffee-tree would grow to a height of twenty or twenty-five feet if we permitted it to do so; we cut it off about six feet from the ground, and thus force the vigor into the branches; we want it low enough to pick from without too much reaching or climbing, and this would not be the case if we allowed the tree to run up as it would naturally."

Then he gave the youths an account of the harvesting of the crop, and its preparation for market, but as this has already been described elsewhere[5] Fred did not make a record of it. The culture of coffee is pretty nearly the same all the world over wherever the plant is grown.

The conversation with the coffee-grower had not prevented our friends from observing the scenery which lies between Orizaba and Cordoba along the line of the railway. They were especially impressed with the engineering which was required for crossing the barranca of Metlac; this barranca is about 200 feet deep, by twice that width, and the first thought of the engineers was to throw a bridge directly across it. A bridge of a single span of 400 feet would be very costly, and piers 200 feet in height to support a lighter structure could not be built without great expense. Consequently the plan was adopted of descending to where the barranca is less wide and high before attempting to span it.

"The bridge," wrote Frank, "is on eight piers of iron, resting on masonry, and it curves in its course from one side of the barranca to the other on a radius of 325 feet. It is 400 feet long and 92 feet high; the railway is cut into the slope of the barranca on each side, and as it nears the bridge it enters a tunnel that curves so as to give the necessary approach. The incline of the railway on each side of the barranca is about three feet in a hundred, and for quite a distance the opposite tracks are almost parallel to each other. The sides of the barranca are covered with a dense growth of tropical trees and underbrush, and the picture it presents is very attractive to the traveller, however disheartening it may have been to the men who planned the railway. Many a railway engineer in Mexico has regretted that barrancas were ever invented, and, on the other hand, has congratulated himself that their number is no larger than it is."