A Journey in Southeastern Mexico

by Henry Howard Harper

We stalked around town with our pockets bulging out with Mexican national bank notes, and felt quite opulent. Our wealth had suddenly increased to almost double, and it didn't seem as if we ever could spend it, dealing it out after the manner of the natives, three, six, nine and twelve cents at a time. We acquired the habit of figuring every time we spent a dollar that we really had expended only fifty cents. Our fears that we should have difficulty in spending very much money must have shone out through our countenances, for the natives seemed to read them like an open book; and for every article and service they charged us double price and over. We soon found we were spending real dollars, and before returning home we learned to figure the premium the other way.

The moment we began to transact business with these people we became aware that we were in the land of mañana (tomorrow). The natives make it a practice never to do anything today that can be put off until tomorrow. Nothing can be done today,—it is always "mañana," which, theoretically, means tomorrow, but in common practice its meaning is vague,—possibly a day, a week, or a month. Time is reckoned as of no consequence whatever, and celerity is a virtue wholly unknown.

Our business and sightseeing concluded, we made inquiry as to the way to get to Tuxpam,[2] a small coast town in the State of Vera Cruz, about a hundred miles further south. We inquired of a number of persons and learned of nearly as many undesirable or impossible ways of getting there. There were coastwise steamers from Tuxpam up to Tampico, but none down the coast from Tampico to Tuxpam. After spending a whole day in fruitless endeavor to find a means of transportation we were returning to the hotel late in the afternoon, when a native came running up behind us and asked if we were the Americans who wanted to go to Tuxpam. He said that he had a good sailboat and was to sail for Tuxpam mañana via the laguna,—a chain of lakes extending along near the coast from Tampico to Tuxpam, connected by channels ranging in length from a hundred yards to several miles, which in places are very shallow, or totally dry, most of the time. We went back with him to his boat, which we found to be a sturdy-looking craft about thirty feet long, with perhaps a five-foot beam. It was constructed of two large cedar logs hewn out and mortised together. The boatman said he had good accommodations aboard and would guarantee to land us at Tuxpam in seven days. He wanted two hundred dollars (Mexican money, of course) to take our party of four. This was more than the whole outfit was worth, with his wages for three weeks thrown in. We went aboard, and were looking over the boat, rather to gratify our curiosity than with any intention of accepting his monstrous offer, when one of the party discovered a Mexican lying in the bottom of the boat with a shawl loosely thrown over him. Our interpreter inquired if anyone was sick aboard, and was told by the owner that the man was a friend of his who was ill with the smallpox, and that he was taking him to his family in Tuxpam. We stampeded in great confusion and on our way to the hotel procured a supply of sulphur, carbolic acid, chlorine, and all the disinfectants we could think of. Hurrying to one of our rooms in the hotel, we barred the door and discussed what we should do to ward off the terrible disease. Some one suggested that perhaps the boatman was only joking, and that after all the man didn't have smallpox. It didn't seem plausible that he would ask us to embark for a seven days' voyage in company with a victim of an infectious disease. But who would venture back to ascertain the facts? Of course this task fell upon the interpreter, as he was the only one who could speak the language. While he was gone we began preparing for the worst, and after taking account of our stock of disinfectants the question was which to use and how to apply it. Each one recommended a different formula. One of the party found some sort of a tin vessel, and putting half a pound of sulphur into it, set it afire and put it under the bed. We then took alternate sniffs of the several disinfectants, and debated as to whether we should return home at once, or await developments. Meanwhile the room had become filled almost to suffocation with the sulphur fumes, the burning sulphur had melted the solder off the tin vessel, and running out had set the floor on fire. About this time there was a vigorous rap at the door and some one asked a question in Spanish; but none of us could either ask or answer questions in that language, so there was no chance for an argument and we all kept quiet, except for the scuffling around in the endeavor to extinguish the fire. The water-pitcher being empty, as usual, some one seized my new overcoat and threw it over the flames. At this juncture our interpreter returned and informed us that it was no joke about the sick man, and that the police authorities had just discovered him and ordered him to the hospital. He found that the boatman had already had smallpox and was not afraid of it; he was quite surprised at our sudden alarm. As the interpreter came in, the man who had knocked reappeared, and said that having smelled the sulphur fumes he thought someone was committing suicide. When we told him what had happened he laughed hysterically, but unfortunately we were unable to share the funny side of the joke with him.

That evening when we went down to supper everybody seemed to regard us with an air of curious suspicion, and we imagined that we were tagged all over with visible smallpox bacteria.

We afterwards learned that the natives pay little more heed to smallpox than we do to measles; and especially in the outlying country districts, they appear to feel toward it much as we do toward measles and whooping-cough,—that the sooner they have it and are over with it (or rather, it is over with them), the better.[3] One of the party vowed that he wouldn't go to his room to sleep alone that night, because he knew he should have the smallpox before morning. After supper we borrowed a small earthenware vessel and returning to our "council chamber" we started another smudge with a combination of sulphur and other fumigating drugs. Someone expressed regret that he had ever left home on such a fool's errand. During the night it had been noised about that there was a party of "Americanos ricos" (rich Americans) who wanted to go to Tuxpam, and next morning there were a number of natives waiting to offer us various modes of conveyance, all alike expensive and tedious. We finally decided to go via the laguna in a small boat, and finding that one of the men was to start that afternoon we went down with him to see his boat, which proved to be of about the same construction and dimensions as the one we had looked at the previous afternoon. He said that he had scarcely any cargo and would take us through in a hurry; that he would take three men along and if the wind was unfavorable they would use the paddles in poling the boat. His asking price for our passage, including provisions, was $150, but when he saw that we wouldn't pay that much he dropped immediately to $75; so we engaged passage with him, on his promising to land us in Tuxpam in six days. He said there was plenty of water in the channels connecting the lakes, except at one place where there would be a very short carry, and that he had arranged for a man and team to draw the boat over. We ordered our baggage sent to the boat and not liking his bill of fare we set out to provide ourselves with our own provisions for the trip.

When we arrived at the boat we found our baggage stored away, with a variety of merchandise, including a hundred bags of flour, piled on top of it. There was not a foot of vacant space in the bottom of the boat, and we were expected to ride, eat and sleep for six days and nights on top of the cargo. The boatman had cunningly stored our effects underneath the merchandise hoping that we would not back out when we saw the cargo he was to take. However, we had become thoroughly disgusted with the place and conditions (the hotel man having arbitrarily charged us $25 for the hole we burned in his cheap pine floor), and were glad to get out of town by any route and at any cost. We all clambered aboard and were off at about three p.m. As we sat perched up on top of that load of luggage and merchandise when the boat pulled out of the harbor we must have looked more like pelicans sitting on a huge floating log than like "Americanos ricos" in search of rubber, vanilla and coffee lands. We didn't find as much rubber in the whole Republic of Mexico as there appeared to be in the necks of those idlers who had gathered on the shore to see us off.

The propelling equipment of our boat consisted of a small sail, to be used in case of favorable breezes—which we never experienced—and two long-handled cedar paddles. The blades of these were about ten inches wide and two and a half feet long, while the handles were about twelve feet long. The natives are very skillful in handling these paddles. They usually work in pairs,—one on each side of the boat. One starts at the bow by pressing the point of the paddle against the bottom and walks along the edge of the boat to the stern, pushing as he walks. By the time he reaches the stern his companion continues the motion of the boat by the same act, beginning at the bow on the opposite side. By the time the first man has walked back to the bow the second has reached the stern, and so on. The boats are usually run in the shallow water along near the shore of the large bodies of water in the chain of lakes, so that the paddles will reach the bottom. The boatman had three men besides himself in order to have two shifts, and promised that the boat should run both night and day. This plan worked beautifully in theory, but how well it worked out in practice will be seen later on. We glided along swimmingly until we reached the first channel a short distance from Tampico, and here we were held up for two hours getting over a shoal. That seemed a long wait, but before we reached our destination we learned to measure our delays not by hours but by days. After getting over the first obstruction we dragged along the channel for an hour or so and then came to a full stop. We were told that there was another shallow place just ahead and that we must wait awhile for the tide to float us over. We prepared our supper, which consisted of ham, canned baked beans, bread, crackers, and such delicacies as we had obtained at the stores in Tampico. The supper prepared by the natives consisted of strips of dried beef cut into small squares and boiled with rice and black beans. At first we were inclined to scorn such fare as they had intended for us, but before we reached Tuxpam there were times when it seemed like a Presidential banquet. After supper three of the boatmen went ahead, ostensibly to see how much water there was in the channel, while the fourth remained with the boat. After starting a mosquito smudge and discussing the situation for a couple of hours, we decided to "turn in" for the night. The interpreter asked the remaining Mexican where the bedding was. His only response was a sort of bewildered grin. He didn't seem to understand what bedding was, and said they never carried it. We were expected to "roost" on top of the cargo without even so much as a spread over us,—which we did. It was an eventful night,—one of the many of the kind that were to follow. After the fire died out we fought mosquitoes—the hugest I had ever seen—until about three o'clock in the morning, when I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. There being no frost in this section to kill these venomous insects, they appear to grow and multiply from year to year until finally they die of old age. A description of their size and numbers would test the most elastic human credulity. Webster must have had in mind this variety when he described the mosquito as having "a proboscis containing, within the sheathlike labium, six fine sharp needlelike organs with which they puncture the skin of man and animals to suck the blood."

I had been asleep but a short time when the party returned from the inspection of the "water" ahead, and if the fire-water they had aboard had been properly distributed it would almost have floated us over any shoal in the channel. They brought with them two more natives who were to help carry the cargo over the shallow place, but all five of them were in the same drunken condition. In less than ten minutes they all were sound asleep on the grass beside the channel. We were in hopes that such a tempting bait might distract some of the mosquitoes from ourselves, but no such luck. The mosquitoes had no terrors for them and they slept on as peacefully as the grass on which they lay. All hands were up at sunrise and we supposed of course we were to be taken over the shoal; but in this we were disappointed, for this proved to be some saint's day, observed by all good Mexicans as a day of rest and feasting.[4] We endeavored to get them to take us back to town, but no one would be guilty of such sacrilege as working on a feast-day. When asked when we could proceed on the journey they said "Mañana." After breakfast our party strolled off into the pasture along the channel and when we returned to the boat a few minutes later the Mexicans shouted in a chorus "Garrapatas! mucho malo!" at the same time pointing to our clothes, which were literally covered with small wood-ticks, about half the size of an ordinary pinhead.

Garra—pronounced gar-r-r-ra—means to hook or grab hold of, and patas means "feet," so I take it that this pestilential insect is so named because it grabs hold and holds tight with its feet. If this interpretation be correct, it is well named, because the manner in which it lays hold with its feet justifies its name, not to mention the tenacity with which it hangs on with its head. It is very difficult to remove one from the skin before it gets "set," and after fastening itself securely the operation of removing it is both irritating and painful. If it should ever need renaming some word should be found that signifies "grab hold and hang on with both head and feet."

They cling to the grass and leaves of bushes in small clusters after the manner of a swarm of bees, and the instant anything touches one of these clusters they let go all hold and drop off onto the object, and proceed at once to scatter in every direction; taking care, however, not to fall a second time. We had noticed a few bites, but paid no special attention to them, as we were becoming accustomed to being "bitten." Many of them had now reached the skin, however, and they claimed our particular attention for the remainder of the day. We inquired how best to get rid of them and were told that our clothes would have to be discarded. The loss of the clothes and the wood-ticks adhering to them was not a matter of such immediate consequence as those which had already found their way through the seams and openings and reached the skin. We were told that to bathe in kerosene or turpentine would remove them if done before they got firmly set, and that if they were not removed we would be inoculated with malaria and thrown into a violent fever, for being unacclimated, their bite would be poisonous to our systems. Of course there was not a drop of kerosene or turpentine aboard, so the direst consequences were inevitable. Our trip was fast becoming interesting, and with the cheering prospects of malarial fever and smallpox ahead, we began to wonder what was next! All interest in the progress of the journey was now entirely subverted, and, with the mosquitoes and garrapatas to play the accompaniment to other bodily woes and discomforts, sufficient entertainment was in store for the coming night.