All along and up and down the banks of the Tuxpam River, and in other more remote localities, there are countless wrecks and ruins of sugar mills, distilleries and other evidences of former American industry, which mark the last traces of blighted ambitions and ruined fortunes of investors. The weeds and bushes have overgrown the ruins and tenderly sheltered them from the sun's rays and the view of the uninquisitive passer-by. They have become the silent haunts of wild animals, scorpions and other reptiles. At the visitor's approach a flock of jaybirds will immediately set up a clamorous chattering and cawing in the surrounding trees, as if to reproach the trespasser who invades the lonely precincts of these isolated tomb-like abodes. They tell their own tale in more eloquent language than any writer could command. With each ruin there is a traditional and oftentimes pathetic story. In some cases the investor was fortunate enough to lose only his money, but in many instances the lives along with the fortunes of the more venturesome were sacrificed to some one or other of the various forms of pestilence which from time to time sweep over the country.
Among the native fruit products in this section the orange and the mango hold first rank, with bananas and plantains a close second. In close proximity to almost every native hut one will find a small patch of plantain and banana stalks. The plantain is made edible by roasting with the skin on, or by peeling and splitting it in halves and frying it in lard or butter.
Of all tropical fruits the mango is perhaps the most delicious. Its tree grows to enormous size and bears a prolific burden of fruit. In front of my house are a great number of huge mango trees which are said to have been planted more than two hundred years ago. The fruit picked up from under a single tree amounted to a trifle over one hundred and sixty-one bushels. Unlike the banana or even our American peaches, pears and plums, the mango is scarcely fit to eat unless allowed to ripen and drop off the tree. Much of the delicacy of its flavor is lost if plucked even a day before it is ready to fall. When picked green and shipped to the American markets it is but a sorry imitation of the fruit when allowed to ripen on the tree. It ripens in June, and it is almost worth one's while to make a flying trip to the tropics in that month just to sit beneath the mango tree and eat one's fill of this fruit four or five times a day.