24 



TAMPICO. 



Indian raises his bamboo cage, plastered with mud, and 

 thatched with palm leaves, according to the custom of 

 his forefathers. 



The population is of course the most mongrel that 

 can be conceived. The commerce of the port is prin- 

 cipally in the hands of foreigners ; the imports con- 

 sisting of every imaginable fabric, whether their intro- 

 duction is consistent with the existing laws of the re- 

 public or not. Smuggling is reduced to a system. 

 The exports are confined to specie and fustic alone. 

 Of the former, seven millions of dollars from the upper 

 provinces were shipped at this port alone 3 during the 

 year 1833. 



The sum of the population the preceding year, be- 

 fore the cholera broke out, had been estimated at five 

 thousand. Of these, three thousand are said to have 

 been swept away : and though the town was rapidly 

 recruiting its numbers at the time of our visit, the enor- 

 mous price paid for every article, whether of foreign or 

 domestic production, as well as for labour, is hardly to 

 be credited. Wages for the poorest mason or carpenter, 

 generally English or German, amounted to three or four 

 dollars a day : indeed I knew one instance of a " turn 

 out" of the workmen employed upon the house of one 

 of the principal merchants, who were not content with 

 four dollars, but laid a claim to six ! The most ragged 

 urchin lying all day under the shade in the street, if 

 asked to lend a hand to aid the operations of the mer- 

 chant for a few hours, will not stir till he has made his 

 bargain for a couple of dollars payment. You cannot 

 cross the river, a row of five minutes, for less. To come 

 up from the bar, a distance of six miles, though you be 

 ten in company — ten dollars per head is the sum de- 

 manded. Good law, and good physicking — and one 

 might add, good advice, that cheapest of all articles in 

 an ordinary state of society — cannot be had for love or 

 money. This, among a beggarly, half-naked population, 

 (I cry your pardon for speaking so of a sovereign people,) 

 would be perfectly laughable, if it were not felt to be a 

 serious matter. You may remark that both classes, 



