When I came down to breakfast in the morning, I did not recognize the quiet empty Hotel that I had entered in the small hours of the night. The hall was thronged with white suited, sombrero’d men, gun on hip. They were every type and age. There was not a single woman in the crowd. I thought I had dropped into a film play. Looking out into the sunlit streets small buildings met my gaze, an open fronted restaurant opposite, and barber shops full of men reclining in dental chairs at the mercy seemingly of someone engaged in cutting their throats. Dick asked me nervously, “What are they doing to that poor man...?” and I explained they would do it to him some day. Everything seemed open to the street. It was hot, divinely hot. Sitting still in the shade with no exertion, one had to mop one’s forehead. For the first time in my life I am comfortably warm, and Dick half clad, and protesting against the condition of his body has nevertheless recovered his color, his appetite, and his mischievous eye. In the evening we took a tram (overcrowded with a motley collection of workers) to a place half an hour away, called “Miramar.” Here Dick and Louise bathed in the surf. I felt I had been very superior (instead of lazy) for looking on, when they came out black with the oil which floats on the water. They had to take gasoline shower at the bath house to get clean! The sunset sky was very lovely, but the little wavelets that break on the beach, instead of being ripples of foam, were heavy dark and sluggish. I have said that everything is open to the street: I include at night a quarter of the town where ladies sit outside their open lit up doorways, displaying a big bedded small room inside. These houses are almost standardised, varying only in the manner of their lights. Some preferring pink, to the cruder unshaded electric globe. From within the dancing saloons came the sound of music. Ladies fanned themselves at the door. Some had black hair and faces powdered ashen white. But the prevalent taste seemed for auburn hair, some color, and a bright pink dress. One or two in night attire were completely and transparently silhouetted in their doorways. The streets in this district being thronged, there is perfect traffic superintendence, and the tramcar has its terminus in this very midst. Everything in this respect being made easy for the tourist. From the first moment I felt Tampico is a town for men. FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1921. _Tampico._ We started off in the morning in our riding clothes for a two days’ trip across the oil fields. There is no railway, and one might almost say there are no roads to take one over the 80 kilometers to the little “boom oil town” of Zacamixtle where the oil wells are.