46
stance of the latter, public demonstrations were made in his honor. At the request of General Barrios, Mr. Romero wrote a series of comments upon the Guatemalan project of a constitution, then under discussion.
As the result of this first visit to Soconusco, although his resources did not permit the purchase of the hacienda of Malacate, he resolved to establish himself near Tapachula, giving his chief attention to the cultivation of India-rubber. He arrived there definitively with his family in February, 1873, and in the following month made a visit to the capital of Guatemala. He found General Barrios provisionally in charge of the Presidency, to which he was formally elected two months later. The General received Mr. Romero with the greatest cordiality, expressed a desire that he should settle within the territory of Guatemala, offered him the necessary resources for the purchase of lands, and expressed a desire to become his partner in establishing a new coffee plantation on Mexican public lands adjacent to his hacienda of Malacate and to the Guatemalan frontier. The latter proposal alone was accepted by Mr. Romero, and an unsigned contract was drawn up. The confidence of General Barrios was at this time carried to the extreme of intrusting Mr. Romero with the drawing up of a decree establishing religious liberty in Guatemala in conformity with Mexican antecedents, and with the preparation of one or more editorial articles in defense of the provisional government of Barrios.
Returning by land to Soconusco, Mr. Romero visited the hacienda of Malacate to inspect the lands proposed for the coffee plantation, and then devoted himself to the formation of his own India-rubber plantation, called the Hular de Zuchiate, on lands adjacent to the
