TAMPICO

Hokitika Guardian, 1 October 1929, Page 8

TAMPICO

A ROMANTIC NAME. (Auckland Star). Some places are blest with names that fairly throb with' the music of romance. Penang, Zamboanga, Valparaiso, Zanzibar, Santiago—they vibrate .with the same exovic melody that is captured in KeteLby’s piece, w ln a Persian Market.” Anything could happen in a port so seductively named., On the shores of all the seven seas there is no port with a more alluring name than Tampico. A poetic name. One wonders why Masefield has not made something of it. IPs three syllables fall staccato vibrantly reminiscent of lizard skin drums throbbing in the depths of dark tropic forests, when cannibals dance round the Stone of Sacrifice. Tampico, Tampico, the stamp and shuffle ’of bare feet, the naked warriors whirling and writhing in swift circles round their stone idols, and the .lizard skin drums booming, booming, (booming

SAD DISILLUSIONMENT,

All very romantic, quite thrilling, in iact; but it is a sad disillusionment to listen to the officers of the Weir Line motor ship Oakbank, which arrived at Auckland this week with a cargo of ashphalt from that very port of Tampico. “Tampico? Pali! There’s nothing to it. All stinx and mosquitoes,” is the opinion of the second officer, who favours the Yankee idiom in his speech, and does not care a cuss for

visionary romance. Eight days .in lampico was a week wasted, he declares. “Of all the parts which are a haven of joy to the sea-weary sailormen Tampico is the most delightful—we don’t think.”

Tampico is one of the chief ports of Mexico, it lies on the llio Panuco, nine miles from where the river runs into the Gulf of Mexico. The big Laguna di Tampico spreads out for miles about, a hideous steaming morass of oily water, mud and mangroves. Every objectionable form of animal life swarms there, ranging in size from yjft. anacondas and 20ft. alligators down to bird-eating spiders and the Pny mosquitoes that breed by the million. and inject the germs of yellow lever into their victims. But there .is cargo there, and wharves at which to load it, so the reluctant skippers of iramp vessels read their orders, fill the medicine chest with quinine and lay their course ,for Tampico with little more than the' ordinary cuss words.

MEXICO CIVILISED

Everything that romantic authors have written about Mexico, from the uoubtful history of Rider Haggard’s

“Montezuma’s Daughter” to the revolutionary heroics of Peter B. Kyne’s -Webster, Man’s Man,” is utterly lacking in Tampico. There has not been a revolutionary battle there for years; • the revolutions are all over uefore Tampico knows that they are on. The people are certainly a little ••foreign looking,” ranging in colour from the creamy yellow of the pure Spanish type to the jet black of the indian-Negro hybrid. According to .radition they should all go armed to the teeth with knives and guns and lariats, but the fact is tha,t the men oi the Oakbank never saw a single corpse during tne whole of their eight days’ stay. Even when the second mate, ever responsive to a pair of sparkling eyes went gallivating in the dark lanes of the city, no one tried to slip a stiletto under his left shoulder blade, though according to his brother officers he thoroughly earned that fate, i rolonged contact with Americans and Britishers have quite civilised the “dago” population of Tampico. They do not even drink wine. Beer, German lager for preference, is the popular thirst-quencher, an incongruous beverage with which to wash down a meal of frijoles and’ tamales. “It seems to work an right, though,” says ..ic chief officer. “No ’vino’ for me when there is plenty of good Pilzener about.”

EXPORT OF OIL. Oil is the chief reason for Tampico’s being. Up in the low hills back of the town a forest of frame derrricks has replaced the ancient jungle. In ihe first days of the oil discovery Tampico boomed. No method of utilising crude oil had then been invented, and millions of tons of it was poured into the lagoon. Only the petrol was exported. Now the field is declining. The wells have been driven so deep that soft water, seepage from the lagoon, comes up with the petroleum, and has to be extracted by.a machine similar to a cream separator. Through this much of me product of the wells runs to waste. The river and the lagoon are covered inches deep with black oil, so that one forgets the water underneath. It seems all oil. “The porpoises have D’esel engines in them, and the flowers have a scent like a motor car exhaust,” says the chief officer of the Oakbank.

In part the decline of th& TampTeo ril field is due to the- super-patriotic legislation of the Mexican Government. n excessively heavy export duty on jetrol is strangling the-industry. Only one company is now working there, and it survives hy utilising practically everything that comes out. of the wells. Petrol and crude oil are obtained by various stages of distillation, and the losidum . becomes the asphalt which lhe On khan k has brought to make snnSoth our New Zealand roads.