Field Notebook: Mexico 1906
Page 127
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Transcription
(2) Hotel Internacional LADO SUR DE LA ALAMEDA. CALLE DE LA ARTILLERIA No. 6 S.L.P. San Luis Potosi, de 190 This Pleistocene plain did not have time enough to erode to sea level. It is an undulating plain with ridges on it up to 100 feet high. At about 44 kilometers from Tampico we are on the Pleistocene plain. It is a rolling undulating plain and where the jungle has been removed for stock raising produces considerable beef grass. Occasionally in the telegraph wires are seen long pendant vines, meats, and here and there a hawk or a carim bird. At El Toro, on this same plain we see the newly discovered oil wells - an oil for burning and not being used in some of the engines of Mexican Central. It is a heavy oil and is not distilled for other purposes. The company controlling these wells and much of the land is a California oil syndicate having invested more than one million dollars a field. As yet but four tanks are built and I could learn nothing about the oil yield but one well is said to flow very strongly. These wells were discovered through the presence of asphalt - "asphalt lakes" on the surface. Arriving at Velasco (70 kilometers from Tampico), had constant rain on a bar of plaid on the Pleistocene plain we begin to discern in the far distance the high wall of what I share the "Tertiary Plain." Its top is perfectly horizontal and for many miles to the right or north there are no gaps cut down through it. At Coco (94 kilometers), the Tertiary plane forms our horizon and clouds are making in part of it and block size over it. At Rodriguez (104 kilometers) we are at the base of the plain, where stood four ruins of the walls. It is here seen like a nearly flat top level without