Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/556

548 time the yellow-fever was within eighteen miles of Cordova and rapidly advancing up the mountains. Now it was in the town itself, and raging still more fiercely than at the coast, and it was reported that the small-pox was carrying off such as the vomito spared. Three telegrams, sent in advance, elicited no response from my friend, and I feared he had departed, a victim to the vomito, until the dreaded station was reached, and my luggage found in possession of the agent.

It is a very strange fact,—but nevertheless a fact,—that, no matter how much the vomito has devastated a place, the prominent people all seem to be spared. Here in Cordova, it was reported, a dozen people had died daily for a month, yet at the depot there were the same officials, the same porters, even the same women and children selling mangos and pine-apples.

Dreaded by many is the passage through the city of Vera Cruz during the summer or the autumn months. Every precaution is taken against delay there, and people en voyage hurry through hardly daring to draw a deep breath till safe on shipboard. My calculations had been made with an eye to this fact, with the intention of going direct from train to steamer; but there was a great obstacle to the carrying out of this plan. As we got down clear of the mountains and were crossing the Llanos, we were saluted by furious blasts; the palm trees were wildly lashing their trunks with their long leaves, and the wind whistled and howled through the train.

A chronic complaint along the coast of Vera Cruz is that blast of Boreas called the "Norther." It swoops down upon the sea like a bird of prey, sending ships ashore, and laying low many a forest monarch and many a residence on land. The open roadsteads of this coast offer no protection, except for the slight shelter afforded by the island and castle of San Juan de Ulua, in the bay of Vera Cruz. The sea dashes over the quay in great waves, and over the sea-wall into the streets, covering the customhouse with spray, and the houses of even the back streets with incrustations of salt. The wind howls through the streets, filling everybody with sand and consternation; but it is a welcome visitor, nevertheless, and the amount of disease and fever