Python Novice: Matlab equivalents

[Prem Rachakonda]

Hi,
  I have some data which is the measure of the heights of a plane. In
Matlab, I could get a 3d Mesh. I have 100 divisions in x-axis and 40
divisions in y-axis and there are 100X40 = 4000 points which represent
the height in millimeters in Z-axis.

z=dlmread('data.txt','\t'); %Data is in tab delimited text file
y=meshgrid(1:1:40);         
mesh(z);

This gives me a good figure with the surface. 

1. How good is python in matrices? If it is where are the libraries?
2. How to implement the above matlab script in python?

Prem