Miscellanea > Documents
As part of the novel's churrigueresque structure, UTV draws upon a wide variety of documents and ephemera, which Lowry retained in his possession in Vancouver although many were destroyed in the 1944 burning of his shack at Dollarton.
… his final dispatch (sent that morning from the Oficina Principal of the Compañia Telegráfica Mexicana, Esq., San Juan de Letrán e Independencia, México, D. F.) – UTV, 94.

The original telegram turned up (1982), after many years, in the Templeton Collection at the University of British Columbia; that cited in the novel differs only with respect to an obvious error ('iontelube' instead of 'inteltube') and perhaps a joke: 'Esq' (Sp. esquina, "square") as a term of address.

The whole left side of the menu was taken up by a full-length lithographic portrait of a smiling young woman … she was buxom and dowdy, with a quasi-American coiffure, and she was wearing a long, confetti-colored print dress: with one hand she was beckoning roguishly, while with the other she held up a block of ten lottery tickets, on each of which a cowgirl was riding a bucking horse – UTV, 329.

The original menu, long thought lost, turned up (1982) in the Templeton Collection at the University of British Columbia. The back of the menu features, exactly as described in the novel, the "Recknung" and the poem of the "poor floundered soul" who once fled north.
Details of the scrawlings on the menu (front and back)
Ti-to
Calle Nicaragua, cinquenta dos. – UTV, 47.

Above: Nicaraguan stamp (1902, 20¢ red), featuring Momotombo volcano.