[12] While this volume was in process of issue there appeared in several leading newspapers a full-page advertisement by some Mexican orange-grove company, which contained many of the most extraordinary offers. For example, the promoters agree, for a consideration of $250, to plant a grove of fifty orange trees and to care for them two years; then turn the grove over to the investor, who receives $250 the first year, $375 the second year, and so on until the tenth year, when the grove of fifty trees nets an income of $5,500 (gold) per annum, which will be continued for upwards of four hundred years. The company's lands are located "where the chill of frost never enters, where the climate excels that of California, where you are 500 miles nearer American markets than Los Angeles and 60 days earlier than Florida crops--this is the spot where you will own an orange grove that will net you $5,500 annually without toil, worry or expense. We will manage your grove, if you desire, care for the trees, pick, pack and ship your oranges to market, and all you will have to do is to bank the check we send to you." It would appear that anyone with $250 who refuses this offer must indeed be heedless of the coming vicissitudes of old age; for the promoters pledge their fortunes and their sacred honor that "when your grove is in full bearing strength you need worry no longer about your future income." Having had some experience in farming in my boyhood, I thought I knew more about corn-raising than the natives did and that I would demonstrate a few things that would be useful to them; so I instructed my foreman to procure a cultivator and cornplanter from the United States. At Tuxpam I found an American plow which had been on hand perhaps for some years, and was regarded by the natives as a sort of curiosity. No merchant had had the rashness, however, to stock himself with a cultivator or cornplanter. The foreman was ordered to plow about fifteen acres of ground and plant it to corn as an experiment. The natives hearing of the undertaking came from a distance to see the operation. They thought it was wonderful, but didn't seem to regard it with much favor. The piece was planted in due season, and the rows both ways were run as straight as an arrow. It required the combined efforts of all the extra help obtainable in the neighborhood to rid the corn of the pests that beset it, but after cultivating it three times and "laying it by," the height and luxuriance of growth it attained were quite remarkable. Standing a trifle over six feet tall I could not reach half the ears with the tips of my fingers. The ground was rich, and as mellow as an ash-heap and appeared to rejoice at the advent of the plow and cultivator. One night in August there came a hard rain, accompanied by the usual hurricanes at this season, and next morning when I went out, imagine my astonishment to find that not a hill of corn in the whole field was standing! Its growth was so rank