I « * 







lo Tarpon Fishing in Mexico. 



piano wire traces attached, at about 2i". 6^. each, borrowed a reel 

 and line, and set forth the next morning. The train left Mexico 

 City for the north at 7 a.m. and travelled for a day and a night 

 through 318 miles of more or less uninteresting country, mostly 

 consisting of great plains covered with magueys, a cactus from 

 which the national drink of pulque is manufactured. We arrived 

 at St. Louis Potosi about 6 a.m. the following day. Here I 

 changed, and heading east straight for the Gulf, began my long 

 descent from an altitude of 6,120 feet to sea level. From this 

 point the scenery begins to improve and soon becomes some 

 of the grandest in the world, and this day in which we 

 gradually descend from a temperate to a tropical climate 

 passes but too quickly. It is, indeed, exhilarating as one passes, 

 surrounded by the most brilliant sunshine, through such a wealth 

 of luxuriant vegetation ; as one worms one s way for miles along 

 the side of a league-wide valley — a foaming river far below 

 often breaking into a Cyclopean staircase of waterfalls ; as one 

 rushes without effort through great jagged buttresses and slabs of 

 rock, flies along precipices 200 or 300 feet sheer — over ravines 

 which leap to meet the train ; and finally arrives at Tampico some 

 hours after dark among innumerable hosts of busy fireflies. And 

 if, added to all these beauties of prodigal nature, the sportsman 

 is contemplating the prospect of either making or renewing in 

 the near future his acquaintance with the king of fish, he will be 

 indeed a melancholy man who will not enjoy this foretaste of his 

 stay on the Gulf of Mexico. 



I arrived at Tampico about 10 o'clock in the evening. There 

 were no vehicles. I therefore selected a peon from a clamouring 



