JALISCO. lia 



region, lie selected another site some twelve miles farther south, but also on the 

 edge of the plateau, and at the same distance from the coast. Here was founded 

 the town of Coinpostcla, which was long the strategic centre of the whole of west 

 Mexico, but which is now a decayed village. The old Indian city of Jalisco, which 

 has given its name to the state whose capital is Guadalajara, lies four or five miles 

 to the south of Tepic on the slopes of the igneous Cerro San Juan. 



At the is>ue of the mountain gorges, where the Rio Lerma, called also Rio 

 Grande de Santiago, debouches on the low-lying coastlands, stands Santiago, now 

 a mere village of no maritime importance; large vessels can no longer force the 

 dangerous bar to ascend the course of the river to any inland port. Hence San Bias, 

 the present port of the Lerma basin, lies to the south of the alluvial plain, not 

 far from the escarpments of the Sierra de Tejiic. Formeily one of the lateral branches 

 of the Lerma discharged into the San Bias harbour, but it was obstructed during 

 the war of independence, and since then it has remained closed. The port is well 

 sheltered from the winds ; but the approach is naiTow, and has a depth of less than 

 thirteen feet at low water. But such as it is, San Bias is the most frequented 

 seaport on the west coast of ilexico between Mazatlan and Acapulco. The old 

 town stood above the harbour on a bluff of black basalt, accessible only from the land 

 side. Since its destruction during the civil wars, it has remained a mere ruin 

 almost entirely overgrown with vegetation. The present San Bias, which lies on 

 the coast, consists of a group of houses and cottages shaded by cocoanut groves 

 and inhabited chiefly by people of colour. 



The Rio x\meca, which discharges into Banderas Bay south of San Bias, has 

 given its name to the chief town in its basin. Amcca and the neighbouring Cocula, 

 lying in an extremely fertile district studded with lakes and dried-up lacustrine 

 depressions, will one day present a shorter route from the coast to Lake Chapala 

 than the roundabout road running north by Tepic and Guadalajara. But Ban- 

 deras Bay is everywhere exposed to the surf, and the town of Mascota, occup}'- 

 ing a sheltered position in a glen at the foot of the Bufa de San Sebastian cliffs, 

 has no haven on this inhospitable seaboard. The nearest anchorage is that of the 

 little port of Chamela, over 60 miles farther south. 



South of Lake Chapala, the two industrial and picturesque towns of Sayula 

 (4,420 feet) and Zapotlan (4, -320 feet), the latter called also Ciudad de Guzman, 

 form convenient stations on the route leading from Guadalajara to Colima. This 

 provincial capital, formerly Santiago de los Cahalleros, was founded by Cortes in 

 the first years of the conquest, at an altitude of 1,485 feet, on the advanced spurs 

 of the hills which form the pedestal supporting the two volcanoes of " Fii'e " and 

 "Snow." A river, whose numerous feeders descend from the deep gorges scoring 

 the flanks of the mountains, passes to the west of Colima, irrigating its gardens, 

 coffee, sugar, and cotton plantations. So favourable are the conditions of soil and 

 climate that the plains of Colima might become one of the most productive regions 

 in the world under a less primitive system of husbandry. 



The future railway, by which these fertile plains are to be connected with the 

 general Mexican system, has alread}^ made a beginning with a coastline which 

 41 



