"An entire failure," was Taylor's comment on Wool's expedition, and in a sense his judgment appeared to be correct.[13.24] But this was Polk's fault. Where there is nothing to do, nothing can be done.[13.25] Before laying out the campaign the government should have seen what it had now seen--that Saltillo was the key of Chihuahua, and that a properly equipped expedition could not reach the latter city without passing rather close to the former. But in reality Wool accomplished a great deal. He showed how a real soldier, without fear and without political yearnings, could lead an expedition through an enemy's country. Nine hundred miles this army marched. Swift rivers were quickly crossed, ravines filled, hills cut down, mountains climbed. Provisions never failed. No wreckage marked the route. Not a drop of blood was shed; not a shot fired. Wool made enemies only among those who were under obligations to be friends, and made friends among those who were under obligations to be enemies. And out of a crude, heterogeneous mass he forged a keen, tough, highly tempered blade, that was to prove its value soon in a terrible crisis.[13.26] [Illustration: Tampico and Its Environs] [TAMPICO IN VIEW] The other lateral expedition moved against the city of Tampico. This place, the principal town in the state of Tamaulipas, and after Vera Cruz the chief port of Mexico on the Gulf coast, was physically remarkable. Land and water are perhaps nowhere more freakishly intermingled. But for practical purposes one may describe it adequately as on a low ridge--with the immense lagoon of Carpintero on the one hand and the deep, wide, heavy, greenish-brown Pánuco on the other--a little more than five miles from the Gulf, as the river flows. For ten years beginning in 1835 political upheavals and vexatious commercial regulations had militated against its prosperity; but the port was highly prized by the government, and in April, 1846, was taken into its particular care.[13.38] All the old fortifications having been demolished lest they should be turned to account by insurgents, Parrodi, the comandante general, was ordered to prepare the town for defence, and a number of badly planned and badly constructed works--particularly a redoubt equipped with two 8-pounders on the north side of the Pánuco at the bar--gave a semblance of security. Some twenty-five light or fortress guns were placed; but efforts to obtain additional heavy ordnance from Vera Cruz were frustrated by the blockade, and when Ampudia, going north in the summer, was directed to give his first attention to reinforcing the garrison, circumstances again intervened. The people were spirited, however; and the daily Eco voiced their sentiments by exclaiming, "With such officers, with such troops, with such citizens let the Yankees come whenever they please!"[13.38]