Campeche, with its tortuous suburbs, its drawbridges, its unsymmetrical high buildings, is the least Eastern-looking place in Mexico, and boasts no monuments worthy of mention. Our steamer stopped some hours here, giving me the opportunity to pay a long-promised visit to Don F. Ferrer, a charming correspondent, under whose hospitable roof I spent one of the pleasantest days I can remember, amidst music and pleasant talk. We returned to our steamer _en route_ for Carmen in the afternoon, and I looked forward to having the whole boat to myself, when a large canoe full of people rowed up alongside just as we were settling down comfortably. “Oh dear!” I thought, “three days’ voyage with a surplus of eighteen people, not counting half-a-dozen curs and parrots! If the _norte_ gets up, what is to become of us?” They were strolling actors who had long secured all the available accommodation, so that we were given the choice of the deck, and it was with difficulty that I obtained for Lucian, who was prostrated with a severe attack of fever, a wee corner below. Presently his moans attracted the attention of the women. “What is the matter with the gentleman, is it yellow fever?” they inquired. “I shouldn’t wonder,” was my reply; whereupon the whole band made off and left us in undisturbed possession of our berths, where we slept the sleep of the just, and arrived at Carmen as fresh as larks. This place is the great depôt for woods known as Campeche, and drives a brisk trade.
I found my old friend Don Benito, who owns an island called Chinal on the Usumacinta, having mounds, tombs, or maybe basements of temples. Some excavations were made in them, when terra-cotta guns, 4 feet 11 inches long, with bullets likewise of terra-cotta, were brought to light. I was presented with some bullets, which are now in the Trocadéro. The only plausible explanation I can give for the presence of these guns in an Indian mound, is that after the great battle of Centla in Tabasco, in which Cortez’ artillery wrought so much destruction, the natives tried to copy this new war-engine, but being unacquainted either with iron or the effect of powder, they reproduced them in the material most familiar to them, fondly imagining that the result would be the same, and buried them later with their chief.