During our trip from Kilometer 40 to Kilometer 80, we passed the worst of the road, and I counted six cars bogged! The same fate did not befall us, because we had an extremely brilliant driver, but we had to halt for some time owing to the stoppage congestion. The car in front of us contained a Mexican family moving—on the back of their car, uncaged, sat a little green parrot. It looked so wise and talked so much and laughed heartily. It sat on my shoulder for some time and stroked my cheek with its yellow head, and said things to me in Spanish. And when I answered it in English, it put its head on one side and with the most entrancing Latin accent said “Right-o!” I made up my mind that I must have a parrot, a green one with a yellow head. They grow wild here.
The trip was without further incident until we reached Kilometer 80, where we had a bucket full of lemonade and some thick cheese sandwiches and from there in the dark we made for the Huasteca Terminal, crossed the river in a motor and got back to Tampico about 9:30 P.M.
During these two days, I passed through the oil wells of the following companies, operating in the Southern fields:
Huasteca Petroleum Company (Doheny Company).
Mexican Eagle, /or what is known in Mexico as “Cid Mexicana de Petroleo, El Aguola” (English interests).
La Corona, or what is known in Mexico as “N. V. Petroleum Maatschappij La Corona” (Royal Dutch Shell—Dutch Interest).
Mexican Gulf Oil Co. (Mellon Bros., Pittsburgh).
Island Oil Company (Leach & Co.).
International Petroleum Company (John Hays Hammond).
The Texas Company.
Transcontinental Petroleum Company (owned by the Standard Oil Company—J. D. Rockefeller).
Sunday, August 14, 1921. Tampico.
Spent ten hours on a small cabin launch going up the Panuco River and the Tamesi with which it junctions. At the ranch on Don Juan del Rio we stopped to bathe. It was very hot and very beautiful. We passed miles and miles of banana plantations and Indians in their frail overloaded “dugouts” who signalled to us to slow up for fear our “wash” would swamp them. Arm chairs and awnings were prepared for us, but with colored glasses to protect my eyes, I preferred sitting up in the ship’s bow all day in full glare of the sun. It beat down upon me, it burnt me, mercilessly, splendidly. I felt as if all the cold and fogs of England’s winters that had seemed so long, all the spring-times of England that had failed, all the summers of England that had been a disappointment, and all the autumns that had eaten damp into the marrow of my bones, were being burnt and branded and cauterized.
Monday, August 15, 1921. Tampico.
We left Tampico by automobile for the Panuco oil field, and when we reached a point about 20 kilometers east of Panuco we had to abandon our auto in a bog and walk. Our luggage consisted of a gun, two kodaks, three coats and a heavy money bag which we have never dared to leave out of sight. The chauffeur when we abandoned him to his car, had assured us that Panuco was four miles away, “Just over the hill.” We started trustingly and full of energy, two kilometers rough walking over the sunbeaten shadeless plain was a bad start. We were overcome with thirst and Dick had to be carried on our backs in turn. The heat of the sun seemed to increase, the Kodaks became a curse, the coats a mockery. We sweated and limped and panted over the plain, and up the hill in the merciful shade of trees to the crest. No human habitation however was visible; down the hill we went and up the next. Still no sign, yet another hill. Dick became peevish and complaining, everyone too tired to carry him, and the springs in the hollows all dried up. At the foot of the third hill there was a junction of four primitive roads. Our guide left us in a heap, at the crossroads, gun loaded and full cock and with orders not to shoot at sight, but only on provocation, and he went in search of water. I took from my trouser pocket my little jade god, the one that looks like Trotzky and is 2000 years old. He is supposed to be the god who protects one from thirst. I stood him up in the sand and I begged him to send water. “Are you a curse or a blessing?” I asked him. “Never before have I carried you on me, never have I suffered from such thirst—be kind and send us, send us water!”
Half an hour later, when the sun was setting, we heard a distant sound of steps and voices and there our guide came running towards us, and a native boy with a bucket at his side. We all three got up and ran to meet him, ran stumblingly and speechlessly.
“Shut your eyes while you drink it ...” we were told. Womanlike, I looked, it was brown muddy opaque rainwater washed down from the hills ... we drank—and drank, one of us coughed up a small live fish, spat it out and drank again. Never ever had any drink tasted so good! And where was Panuco? Where the Corona Camp? 15 minutes away, said the native boy.