Canada may be traced, but Mexico is a foreign country upon which the railroads need not waste paper in maps or time-tables. A thumb-nail corner in the Santa Fé map shows Mexico, and on it from Mexico City to the Rio Grande on the coast is a wilderness broken only by the harbor of Tampico.
To all American lines meeting at El Paso the business in and out of Mexico has been for more than thirty years a disappointment.
It is now clear that the greatest development in Mexico may take place from the coast and through her oil wealth. From the Rio Grande to Tampico the Gulf coast of Mexico is largely an unpenetrated jungle, rich in natural resources and capable of maintaining a population of many millions.
Tampico harbor is simply the mouth of the Panuco River and the city is nine kilometers from the jetties, which defend the river mouth from the lashings of the Gulf waves. Tampico is capable of indefinite development as a port. It has a large water basin to the south and another to the northwest, while from near the mouth of the river runs a government canal almost due south, defended from the Gulf by a narrow strip of land. This Chijol Canal enters the great lagoon of
