The lottery could not entirely overcome this difficulty, of course, but through the aid of the express companies of this country it was able to effect a substitute, and through this cumbersome and expensive method of transportation its managers endeavored to carry on the business which in the days when the post-office helped them had brought them in twenty thousand letters in twenty-four hours. They selected for their base of operations in the United States the port of Tampa, in the State of Florida--that refuge of prize-fighters and home of unhappy Englishmen who have invested in the swamp-lands there, under the delusion that they were buying town sites and orange plantations, and which masquerades as a winter resort with a thermometer that not infrequently falls below freezing. So Tampa became their home; and though the legislature of that state proved incorruptible, so the lottery people themselves tell me, there was at least an understanding between them and those in authority that the express company was not to be disturbed, and that no other lottery was to have a footing in Florida for many years to come. If Puerto Cortez proved interesting when it was only a name on a theatre programme, you may understand to what importance it grew when it could not be found on the map of any steamship company in New York, and when no paper of that city advertised dates of sailing to that port. For the first time Low’s Exchange failed me and asked for time, and the ubiquitous Cook & Sons threw up their hands, and offered in desperation and as a substitute a comfortable trip to upper Burmah or to Mozambique, protesting that Central America was beyond even their finding out. Even the Maritime Exchange confessed to a much more intimate knowledge of the west coast of China than of the little group of republics which lies only a three or four days’ journey from the city of New Orleans. So I was forced to haunt the shipping-offices of Bowling Green for days together, and convinced myself while so engaged that that is the only way properly to pursue the study of geography, and I advise every one to try it, and submit the idea respectfully to instructors of youth. For you will find that by the time you have interviewed fifty shipping-clerks, and learned from them where they can set you down and pick you up and exchange you to a fruit-vessel or coasting steamer, you will have obtained an idea of foreign ports and distances which can never be gathered from flat maps or little revolving globes. I finally discovered that there was a line running from New York and another from New Orleans, the fastest steamer of which latter line, as I learned afterwards, was subsidized by the lottery people. They use it every month to take their representatives and clerks to Puerto Cortez, when, after they have held the monthly drawing, they steam back again to New Orleans or Tampa, carrying with them the list of winning numbers and the prizes.