Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/430

410 its jaws distended in a sweet, unconscious grin, as if it were catching flies, and not deigning to notice us, though we passed close to it. A canoe, with an Indian woman in it, was paddling about at a very little distance. All these beautiful woods to the right contain a host of venomous reptiles, particularly the rattlesnake. Cranes and herons were fluttering across the surface of the river, and the sportsmen brave the danger of the reptiles, for the sake of shooting these and the beautiful rose-colored spoonbills and pheasants that abound there.

The approach to Tampico is very pretty, and about two miles from it, on the wooded shore, in a little verdant clearing, is a beautiful ranchito—a small farm-house, white and clean, with a pretty piazza. In this farm they keep cows and sell milk, and it looks the very picture of rural comfort, which always comes with double charm, when one has been accustomed to the sight of the foaming surges and the discomforts of a tempest-tossed ship. The sailors called it "El paso (the pass) de Doña Cecilia;" which sounded delightfully romantic. The proprietress, this Doña Cecilia, who lives in such peaceful solitude, surrounded by mangroves, with no other drawback to her felicity but snakes and alligators, haunted my imagination. I trusted she was young, and lovely and heart-broken; a pensive lay-nun who had retreated from the vanities and deceits of the world to this secluded spot, where she lived like a heroine upon the produce of her flocks, with some "neat-handed Phyllis" to milk the cows and churn the butter, while she sat rapt in