[8] In 1907, I received a letter from my foreman at the ranch, saying that yellow fever had spread throughout the Tuxpam valley district, and that upon its appearance in the American settlement at the _mesa_ the whole colony of men, women and children literally stampeded and fled the country, taking with them only the clothes that were on them. The old gentleman (American) from whom I bought my place, and who had lived there for forty-seven years prior to that time, fell a victim to the yellow plague, together with his two grown sons. Thirty years before his wife and two children had fallen victims to smallpox. Thus perished the entire family. It is said that this is the first time in many years that yellow fever had visited that district. I scarcely ever heard of it while there, though Vera Cruz, a few miles further south, is a veritable hot-bed of yellow fever germs. [9] There is nearly an acre of coffee in full bearing on my place, but I have not taken the trouble even to have it picked. Occasionally the natives will pick a little of it either for home use or for sale, but they do not find it profitable, and so most of the fruit drops off and goes to waste. Neither vanilla, coffee nor rubber had ever been profitably raised in large quantities and we therefore decided that under the existing circumstances and hindrances we would dismiss these three articles from further consideration. If we had been content to return home and charge our trip to experience account, all would have been well,--but we pursued our investigations along other lines. The possibilities of the tobacco industry claimed our attention for awhile--it also claimed a considerable amount of money from one of my companions. Someone (perhaps the one who had the land for sale) had recently discovered that the ground in a certain locality was peculiarly suited to the growth of fine tobacco, which could be raised at low cost and sold at fabulous prices. We learned that a large tract of land in this singularly-favored district was for sale; so thither we went in search of information. The soil was rich and heavily wooded; it looked as though it might produce tobacco or almost anything else. I neither knew nor cared anything about tobacco-raising and the place did not therefore interest me in the least. One of my companions, however, had been doing a little figuring on his own account, and had calculated that he could buy this place, hire a foreman to run it, put in from five to eight hundred acres of tobacco that year, and that the place would pay for itself and be self-sustaining the second year. By the third year he would have a thousand acres in tobacco, and the profits would be enormous. It would not require his personal attention, and he could send monthly remittances from home for expenses, and probably come down once a year on a _pleasure trip_. Parenthetically, by way of assurance to the reader that the man had not entirely lost his reason, I may say that