Guadalajara is bound eventually to become a great manufacturing city, owing to the cheap electrical power which can be generated from the river close by. Up till last year 9500 horse-power was brought into the city, and the company charged from two cents to seven cents per kilowatt, according to the amount used, but it has been estimated that the river can supply power up to 200,000 horse-power, and a plant has just been completed which adds 50,000 horse-power to the 9500 horse-power we had before. Another industry which should bring great wealth to the country is the raising of eucalyptus trees for use in making railroad ties, mine timbers, and for furniture. In California the Santa Fe Railroad has planted 40,000 acres with these trees, and now the Mexican Central Railway and the Amparo Mining Company have followed suit, and the business is also being taken up by private parties. It is claimed that in three years a tree grown here is fit for telegraph poles, and in five years is big enough for railroad ties. As there is no timber in this section suitable for ties, this alone will give a good market. The Southern Pacific Railway, which is building a road from Mazatlan to Guadalajara, had to import the ties it needed from California and from Japan. It is stated that eucalyptus makes a growth of three inches in diameter and fifteen feet in height each year for the first five years or so, and needs very little care after the first year; an acre yields $4500 in seven years, or nearly $643 per acre per year, and the trees can be raised on soil that is not suitable for any other crop. Even supposing this estimate as much as threefold sanguine, still eucalyptus is even better than strawberries (which are grown all the year round, and sold here), though a man here who has a thirty-acre tract, part in berries and part in alfalfa, clears $5000 net per year off it. A man with brains, a fair amount of capital, and energy should do well here, and the climate is the finest that I have encountered in twenty years’ wanderings in Canada and the States, even superior to that of California either in winter or summer. During the rainy season, which is from about the middle of June till the end of September, the rainfall is about thirty-five inches, but, curiously enough, during this entire season there will not be more than half-a-dozen days in which it will rain during the daylight hours. The days are sunshiny, bright, and delightfully cool; then about four or five P.M. it will begin to cloud over, and the rain will commence about seven to nine P.M., and continue a steady downpour till sunrise, when it will clear up as if by magic. CHAPTER XXXIII Climate of Guadalajara—American tramps—Courtship under difficulties—Influence of the priesthood—The _Metayer_ system.