“The old buccaneers may have caroused in Lobos, but never could they have been merrier than we, nor had they ampler means for promoting cheer, even though resting there after a successful raid. Both our sutlers and the skippers of our transport ships, with a keen eye to contingencies, were well provided with stores of the fancy sort; many the champagne cork had its wire fastenings cut on Lobos, and probably now, in that bare isle, would be found an array of empty bottles lying half buried in the sand.
“Any one curious about the life we led on Lobos Island will find some detailed description of it in a book I have written called ‘The Rifle Rangers,’ given to the public as a romance, yet for all more of a reality.
“Our sojourn there was but brief, ending in a fortnight or so, still it may have done something to help out the design for which it was made. It got several regiments of green soldiers through the ‘goose-step,’ and, better still, taught them the ways of camp and campaigning life.
“Mems.—A fright from threatened small-pox, trouble with insects, scorpions and little crabs. Also curious case of lizard remaining on my tent ridge pole for days without moving. No wonder at Shakespeare’s ‘Chameleon feeding on air.’ Amusements, stories, and songs; mingling of mariners with soldiers. Norther just after landing, well protected under Lobos.
“La Villa Rica de Vera Cruz (the rich city of the True Cross), viewed from the sea, presents a picture unique and imposing. It vividly reminded me of the vignette engravings of cities in Goldsmith’s old geography, from which I got my earliest lessons about foreign lands. And just as they were bordered by the engraver’s lines, so is Vera Cruz embraced by an enceinte of wall. For it is a walled city without suburbs, scarce a building of any kind beyond the parapet and fosse engirdling it. Roughly speaking, its ground plan is a half circle, having the sea-shore for diameter, this not more than three-quarters of a mile in length. There is no beach or strand intervening between the houses and the sea, the former overlooking the latter, and protected from its wash by a breakwater buttress.
“The architecture is altogether unlike that of an American or English seaport of similar size. Substantially massive, yet full of graceful lines, most of the private dwellings are of the Hispano-Moriscan order, flat-roofed and parapetted, while the public buildings, chiefly the churches, display a variety of domes, towers and turrets worthy of Inigo Jones or Christopher Wren.
“From near the centre of the semicircle a pier or mole, El Muello, projects about a hundred yards into the sea, and on this all visiting voyagers have to make landing, as at its inner end stands the custom house (aduana). Fronting this on an islet, or rather a reef of coral rocks, stands the fortress castle of San Juan d’Ulloa, off shore about a quarter of a mile. It is a low structure with the usual caramite coverings and crenated parapet, surmounted by a watch and flag-tower.
“The anchorage near it is neither good nor ample, better being found under the lee of Sacrificios, a small treeless islet lying south of it nearly a league, and, luckily for us, beyond the range of Ulloa’s guns, as also those of a fort at the southern extremity of the city.
“Hundreds of ships may ride there in safety, though not so many nor so safe as at Anton Lizardo. Perhaps never so many, nor of such varied kind, were brought to under it as on March 9th, 1847.
“The surf boats are worthy of a word, as without them our beaching would have been difficult and dangerous, if not impossible. They were of the whale boat speciality, and, as I remember, of two sizes. The larger were built to carry two hundred men, the smaller half this number. Most of them were brought to Anton Lizardo in two large vessels, and so hastily had they been built and dispatched, that there had not been time to paint them, all appearing in that pale slate colour known to painters as the priming coat. Of course none had any decking, only the thwarts.