Got up at 5:30 A. M. Waked Louise and Dick, breakfasted at 6:15 and then proceeded in a car to catch the seven o’clock train. We started a little late and half way the car stopped in a perfectly deserted street. The panic and agitation in which I finally arrived at the station, to catch the only Mexico City express of the day is indescribable. My destination was not Mexico, but Micos, about ten hours away where I had contrived (as I planned) to camp by the falls. All the camp gear had gone on ahead, but waiting for me at the seven o’clock train were my four friends. Each of them director, superintendent, or some occupation of the sort in a Tampico firm. One an Irishman, one a Scotchman, one a Canadian and the other a Mexican. They were arranging for me, and organizing my camp, and joining it for a holiday. They greeted me at the station by the calming assurance that although it was seven o’clock, the train would not leave for an hour. As a matter of fact it did not start for two hours and a half. I had gotten up at five to catch a train that left at 9:30. Meanwhile we were turned out of our compartment while it was hermetically sealed and fumigated--the enforced legislation for every train from a bubonic plague district. Dick walked around in the pouring rain with a friend and bought a baby parrot without a cage. The flies were such as Tampico alone can boast. When we did start, the engine broke down six miles out. It was nightfall when we reached Micos, a primitive little country station, in the middle of a village street. Here we were met by one who had gone ahead to select our camp. He said he had not had time to get things fixed, and that meanwhile he was renting for us a house in the village. Leaving the others to go to the house I walked back along the railway line with the Irishman to view the falls, and select a site. It was not easy, as the bank goes sheer down from the railway to the falls and sheer up from the falls to the mountain top, both sides densely covered with virgin vegetation. In this place there are no roads, peasants load their donkeys and mules and drive them along the single file tracks. There are no churches. The Spaniards never penetrated into this wilderness, the blood of the people is pure undiluted Indian. The railway has brought to them whatever they know of civilization. At the top of a stony track leading down to the valley, two natives, man and wife, bade us “Buenos Noches.” We asked them where they lived. They pointed way down below to a thatched roof and in gallant native fashion “There is _your_ house” they said to us, assuring us that if we pitched our camp there, we could get eggs, fresh milk, a child for Dick to play with, and moreover a boat to ferry the river. We took some cigarettes from them and walked back, reaching our village house after nightfall. It stood on a bank above the railway. It was, of course, unfurnished. Three beds had been put in one room for Dick, Louise and myself.