30 



TAMPICO. 



thought I, "I can bear it ; and the insects, they are what 

 I have come in search of* What are the robbers to me, 

 they will not find my present wardrobe worth cutting 

 my throat for so leaving my two companions to their 

 sedentary philosophy, and their siestas, which were some- 

 times taken by anticipation in the morning as well as 

 afternoon — as soon as the w 7 eather became genial, I 

 might be daily seen, after securing a breakfast, which, con- 

 sidering how doubtful the dinner was, was a very neces- 

 sary precaution, stealing off up to the bluff, and among the 

 fragile Indian huts. My accoutrement consisted of a 

 good cudgel, a long sharp knife, the same that had ope- 

 rated upon the bisons, a few thousand entomological pins 3 

 a bag for seeds, and a broad-eaved palmetto sombrero. 



That was certainly a species of intoxication ! All 

 was new, except the earth I trod upon — trees, shrubs, 

 plants, insects, and birds. I gathered, examined, im- 

 paled. No flower courted my admiring gaze in vain. 

 No insect hummed in my ear unattended to. If I skirted 

 the riverside — there was the garrulous jackdaw with 

 his mates quarrelling in their indescribable manner 

 among the glossy leaves and innumerable stems of the 

 mangroves ; the white snow crane standing motionless 

 in the shallow water, or a flight of vultures hovering 

 over a dark corner, where my approach had scared 

 them from a bloated carcass — not unfrequently a human 

 one. Farther, the huge slimy log, half buried in the 

 mud, crowded with terrapins ; and the loathsome alli- 

 gator squatting among the reeds on the shore. I would 

 then follow one bf those narrow winding paths cut in 

 that thick dense shrubbery which covers a great portion 

 of the surface of the country in the vicinity of Tarn- 

 pico — a wilderness of curious trees and thickets, matted 

 and woven together with ten thousand creepers and 

 parasitical plants, with their graceful hanging flowers, 

 seed vessels — vines, passifloras, and splendid convolvuli 

 rendered quite impervious by the thorny nature of the 

 covert, and the rank growth of prickly aloes which form 

 the undergrowth. These were the paradise of the par- 



