This does not by any means exhaust the list of disagreeable insects and reptiles, but enough are mentioned to give the reader some idea of the bodily torments to which both the inhabitants and the visitor are constantly subjected. Having obtained a fair idea of the existing conditions we may now return to our friend Mr. B., and then wend our journey homeward. After the visit to the hacienda of the wealthy Spanish gentleman (who, by the way, brought most of his wealth from Spain), he was perhaps the least concerned of any man in Mexico as to whether vanilla, rubber, coffee or anything else could be profitably grown there. Like Dickens with his Dora, he could see nothing but "Carmencita" everywhere, and no matter upon what line or topic the conversation turned it was sure to end in the thought of some new charm in the black-eyed beauty. She was not only a flower, but a whole garden of flowers, too beautiful and too delicate to subsist long in that vulgar soil. She longed for the life, excitement and companionship of the friends of her schooldays in America, compared with which the humdrum monotony of a Mexican hacienda seemed like exile. With ample means and social standing as an armor the conquest was therefore a predestined conclusion. The conquering knight returned home with me, but in less than seven weeks he was back again, though not by the way of the loitering route down the _laguna_. In the following November he returned again to America, bringing with him the coveted treasure whom he installed in a beautiful home in America's greatest metropolis. The union of these two kindred souls was a happy event. Their home has since been blessed with the advent of two lovely girls and one boy. It is therefore no longer true that no American fortune-hunter has ever returned from the rural districts of southeastern Mexico richer than when he went there; for here is an instance where one of the most priceless of all gems was captured and borne triumphantly away from a land which appears to abound in nothing but pestilence and torment. Verily may it be said that this part of Mexico whose people, possibilities, peculiarities, pestilences and pests I have briefly sketched in the foregoing pages, was made for Mexicans, and so far as I am personally concerned, they are everlastingly welcome to it. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Journey in Southeastern Mexico, by Henry Howard Harper