He corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos; but his letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office.

There the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American Governments.

But it must be noted that at about the time of the re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed by Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain passes between the Sta.

Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco.

There are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his account in it.