MESSING AROUND IN MEXICO 



not all of the usual varieties were present, and 

 we caught mainly cabrilla a sort of rock cod 

 that attains any size which happens to suit it. 

 The gulf is, in truth, a gigantic fish trap, so 

 placed as to pocket every kind of marine life 

 that works up the coast, and, outside of sal- 

 mon streams, I have never seen waters with 

 more fish in them or a region better suited 

 for fishing on a commercial scale. Practically 

 all varieties are edible, and the supply is inex- 

 haustible, but nothing is being done to exploit 

 it, and any ambitious effort to do so, under 

 present conditions, would almost certainly re- 

 sult in failure. Not even Mexico's citizens 

 dare risk any considerable investment of 

 money or effort, and of course foreign capital 

 is not welcome. 



Nowhere is there a more desolate coast than 

 that of Lower California, that narrow seven- 

 hundred-mile Mexican tongue of land that 

 extends southward from our California border. 

 Naked headlands rise sheer from the sea; the 

 country behind is a crumpled, waterless wil- 

 derness, hard-baked, thirsty, forbidding. But 

 there is a lure about it. 



We ran north up the gulf, closely skirting 

 the shore, and every foam-girdled reef or 



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