•210 'XHE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA.
is another entrance, which, though deep enough, is too narrow for safety.
This port, the best on the western coast of Mexico, and the half-way station between Panama and San Francisco, can safely harbor five hundred ships. It is part of an immense basin cut in gra.nite rocks — a coarse-gramed granite like that of Fichtelberg and Carlsbad, toothed and rent like the Catalonian Mount- serrat. Its shores are so steep that vessels can lie almost under the chaparral that overhangs its banks. Surrounded by mountains rising on every side from six hundred to three thousand feet, the listless ocean air seems inadequate to drive out the pent-up exhala- tions from an undrained swamp filled with decaying vegetable matter ; and the town, which has the name of being the hottest place on the route, is considered quite unhealthy. For weeks the thermometer stands at 120° in the shade at mid-day. In early days a gap was cut in the hills to admit a current of air ; it was also used as a roadway, and the great gash is pointed to travellers as a specimen of Spanish energy and capability in the olden time. On a strip of soft white sand encircling the bay grow cocoa-palms, their long green arms and smooth stems bending with fruit ; and the amata, or tree of love, ofiers its umbrella form and magnetic influence to all who choose to avail themselves of its ravishing shade.
Tune was when this port was more famous through- out the world than that of New York, or any other along the border of the firm land of America, if we except Vera Cruz and Panama. Under Spanish ruL., it lay in the line of travel from the Philippine islands across Mexico to Vera Cruz, over which route annual caravans of loaded mules carried the wares of China, Japan, and the Spice islands, thence shipped to Spain. Enjoying a monopoly of the Manila trade, it was fre- quented by galleons which annuall}^ dispensed their rich cargoes to merchants who flocked down from the ';apital to make their purchases, and who at the same
