“STINK AND MOSQUITOES.”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18441, 6 December 1929, Page 7

“STINK AND MOSQUITOES.”

DECLINE OF THE OIL FIELDS OF MEXICO. Some places are blest with names that fairly throb with the music of romance. Penang, Zamboanga, Valparaiso, Zanzibar, Santiago—they vibrate with the same exotic melody that is captured in Ketelby’s piece, “In 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. It’s 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 fact; but it is a sad disillusionment to listen to the officers of the Weir Line motor ship Oakbank, which arrived at Auckland last week with a cargo of asphalt from that very port of Tampico. “Tampico? Pah! There’s nothing to it. All stink and mosquitos,” 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 Tampico was a week wasted, he declares. Of all the ports which are a haven of joy to the sea-weary sailorman, Tampico is the most delightful—we don’t think.” Tampico is one of the chief ports of Mexico. It lies on the Rio Panuco, nine miles from wherq/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 30ft anacondas and 20ft alligators down to bird-eating spiders and the tiny mosquitoes that breed by the million and inject the germs of yellow fever into their victims. But there is cargo there, and wharves at which to load it, so the reluctant skippers of tramp 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 doubtful 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 before Tampico knows they are on. The people are certainly a little “foreign looking,” ranging in colour from the creamy yeliow of the pure Spanish type to the jet black of the IndianNegro hybrid. According to tradition, they should all go armed to the teeth, with knives and guns and lariats, but the fact is that the men of the Oakbank never saw a single corpse during the whole of their eight days’ stay. Even when the second mate, ever responsive to a pair of sparkling eyes, went gallivanting into 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. Prolonged 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 mea! of frijoles and tamales. T ‘lt seems to work all right, though,” says the 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 derricks has replaced the ancient jungle. In the first days of the oil discovery Tampico boomed. No method of utilising crud: oil had then been invented, and millions of tons of it were poured into the lagoon. Only the petrol was exported. Now the field is declining. The wells have been driven so deep that salt 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 the 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 Diesel 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 the Tampico oil field is due to the super-patriotic legislation of the Mexican Govern- • ment. An exceedingly heavy export duty on petrol is strangling the industry. Only one company is now working there, and it survives by utilising practically everything that comes out of the wells. Petrol and crude oil are obtained by various stages of distillation, and the residuum becomes the asphalt which the Oakbank has brought to make smooth our New Zealand roads.