28 



TAMPICO. 



vited, to garb ourselves in our best — in which you will 

 recollect we were not much embarrassed by variety of 

 choice — to sneak out of our den at the Bolza, and ride 

 about the environs. 



These rides, however, were principally confined to 

 the evening hours preceding sunset, and to the back of 

 the ridge on the San Luis Potosi road, from many of the 

 banana and sugar plantations on which line, the view over 

 the nearer lakes, and towards the distant Sierra Madre, 

 a spur of which appeared far to the southward, was un- 

 commonly beautiful. 



A rocky bluff overhanging the Panuco, at the upper 

 end of the town just above the market, was the scene 

 of almost a daily visit, as it commanded an extended view 

 over the distant country both far and near. A little 

 above this point, the river Tammasee, draining the Lago 

 Chairel, and many other lagoons covering a vast tract of 

 country to the westward, forms its junction with the 

 Panuco or Tula, which comes from afar, flowing in a 

 most graceful sweep among low wooded islands from the 

 south west. Beyond the farther shore lies the lagoon 

 of Pueblo Viego ; and farther to the south, far in the 

 distance, the fertile uplands of the Huastec, and the ad- 

 vanced spurs of the eastern Cordillera of Mexico. 



There is yet a distant object, which excites the mar- 

 vel of the traveller at Tampico, and this is the Bernal, an 

 isolated mountain, rising like a huge stack, with smooth 

 perpendicular sides, and a jagged summit, over the level 

 line of the horizon to the westward. It is about thirty 

 leagues distant, if we were rightly informed. 



Immediately above Tampico, the peninsula, which is 

 rendered such by the lagoon Carpentaro at the back of 

 the town, continues to rise gradually towards the west- 

 ward, and appears crowded by the Indian huts. They 

 and their bamboo enclosures are nearly buried in a 

 tangled labyrinth of weed of the Solanum species, over- 

 topped occasionally by a banana, or the tall mutilated 

 trunk of a yellow- wood tree. 



At early morning the landing below the bluff might h% 



