Our would-be tobacco-raiser paid no heed to advice or words of warning; he was typical of most Americans who seek to make fortunes in Mexico,--they have great difficulty in getting good advice, but it is ten times more difficult to get them to follow it. You rarely obtain trustworthy information from your own countrymen who have investments there, for the chances are fifty to one that they are anxious to sell out, and will paint everything in glowing hues in the hope that they may unload their burdens on you. Even if they have nothing to sell, they are none the less optimistic, for they like to see you invest your money. Wretched conditions are in a measure mitigated by companionship; in other words, "Misery loves company." Hereafter I shall refer to the man who bought the tobacco land as Mr. A., and to my other companion as Mr. B. Mr. A. was delayed in getting his foreman and had the customary difficulty in hiring help. Three hundred men was all he could muster at first, and they were secured only by paying a liberal advance of twenty-five per cent. over the usual wages. They began cutting timber about the 28th of April,--the season when this work should have been finished, and continued until the rainy season commenced, when scarcely any of the clearing had been burned; and after the rains came it was impossible to start a fire, so the whole work of felling upwards of four hundred acres of forest was abandoned. Every stub and stump seemed to shoot up a dozen sprouts, and growing up through the thick layer of brush, branches and logs, they formed a network that challenged invasion by man or beast. The labor was therefore all lost and the tobacco project abandoned in disgust. I was told by one of the oldest inhabitants--past ninety--that it had never once failed to rain on San Juan's (Saint John's) Day, the 24th of June. Sometimes the rainy season begins a little earlier, and occasionally a little later, but that day never passes without bringing at least a light shower. Of course it was in accord with my friend's run of luck that this should be the year when the rainy season began prematurely; but the truth of the matter is, it was about the most fortunate circumstance that could have occurred; for as it turned out he lost only the money laid out for labor, together with the excess price paid for the land above what it was worth; whereas, had everything gone well he was likely to have lost many thousands of dollars more.[10]