With the dawn, after cocoa and biscuits, we sailed down the coast once more towards San José de Bega, near where it was rumoured there was a ruined cenote with remarkable carved figures. San José is the headquarters of a Mexican wood-cutting company which has a paper concession of the whole east coast from Cape Catoche to Vijia. We say "paper concession" deliberately, for these Mexican trespassers on the independent Indian territory live in a state of siege, and of their nominal holding of about 4,000 square miles the administrator of the Company told us that his chicleros (chicle-cutters) were only able to work fifteen square miles just round the settlement. Thither from the rickety little pier we travelled up by mule-drawn trolley car on the plantation railway, the seats empty sugar-boxes, through swamps haunted by alligators. As at La Compañía Agricola, the administrator and the chief officials were Spanish Cubans, the "hands" all Mexicans. A dusty, dirty garbage-littered street of boarded shanties; in the midst the stuccoed administrative building. At one end a palisaded corral for the mules; at the other a desolate square of clearing, which looked as if it had never known any other use save its apparently present one of a gigantic rubbish-shoot, surrounded by wood cabins built up a foot or two from the ground. This was San José, and here we were received with a courtesy as kindly as that we had experienced at La Compañía Agricola. This Mexican company is known as La Compañía Colonisidora, and we shall have something to say directly about its finances in the sketch we are going to give of the war of extermination in progress hereabouts. The officials knew nothing about ruins, and cared less; but they were politely tolerant of our enthusiasm, and the administrator kindly dispatched a cowboy, dressed in leather from head to foot and armed with rifle, revolver and machete, a bandolier of cartridges slung round him, to a distant part of the estate to fetch a chiclero who could act as guide. Meantime we sat down to breakfast with loaded Winchester rifles leaning against the wall behind us, and every man with a revolver belted on him. They take their life of siege very easily; the Company owns a tramp steamer which comes round from Vera Cruz once a month with provisions; and after the meal the administrator showed us a stone fort which he had had erected in case of a general attack.