150 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



backwater offers them a passage through the forests. Thousands of such channels, 

 flowing now one way, now another, according to the currents of the affluent rivers, 

 cover the whole country with an endless network of navigable waterways masked 

 from view by the floating musses of nympheœ and other aquatic plants. 



The Termines lagoon, which receives a portion of the Usumacinia waters through 

 the branch known as the Rio Palizada, and which is also fed by several other 

 streams, such as the Chumpan, Candelaria, and Mamantel, is an eastern continua- 

 tion of the low- lying phiins of Tabasco. An upheaval of a few yards would suffice 

 to expose its saudb mks and change its navigable channels to stagnant waters. 

 The shore line, which will serve as a rampart for the future lands now being 

 gradually created by the fluvial deposits, already exists in the chain of the two long 

 islands, Aguada and Carmen, M'hich close the entrance of the lagoon, leaving only 

 three passages for vessels of light draught. The Puerto Escondido, or "Hidden 

 Port," as the eastern channel is called, is only a fevv^ inches deep on the sill, and 

 this depth is seldom increased to three or four feet even by the tides, except when 

 accompanied by strong sea Aviuds. The insular spits are merely sandy beaches 

 rising scarcely six or seven feet above sea-level, so that a few miles from land 

 nothing is seen except the continuous line of trees behind w^hich stretch the still 

 waters of the inland Ligoon. On different mips the contour lines of this lagoon 

 are different!}' figured ; they differ, in fact, according to the seasons, the winds and 

 the quantity of sediment washed down by the affluents. On the north side the 

 sheet of water is continued parallel with the shore for a distance of some 60 miles. 

 This extension of the lagoon is merely a brnckish channel gradually narrowing 

 towards its northern extremity, where it is nothing more than a feeble seaward 

 passage occupying the bed of an old inlet on the coast. The lagoon received the 

 name of Termines in 1518 from the pilot Antonio de Alaminos, who supposed that 

 the " island " of Yucatan " terminated " at this point. 



Farther north as far as the neighbourhood of Campeachy a few small coast 

 streims reach the sea. But beyond that place all the rainwater rapidly dis- 

 appears in the porous limestone soil ; not a single rivulet it visible, although there 

 exist in the interior a few lacustrine basins, formed probably in the depressions 

 where more close-grained rocks approach the surface. Such is, towards the middle 

 of the peninsuLi, the brackish L ike Chichankanab, which stretches north and south 

 a distance of about fifteen miles. Other smaller sheets of water are scattered over 

 the north-eastern district and, according to native report, lagoons are also numerous 

 towards the neck of the peninsula west of British Honduras. But neither rivers, 

 springs, nor any surface waters are seen in the more densely- peopled central, north- 

 western, and northern districts, where nothing occurs except some morasses tem- 

 porarily flooded during the rainy season. The moisture, however, is collected in 

 the bowels of the earth above the impermeable rocks, and, thanks to the natural 

 galleries occurring here and there, the inhabitants are able to reach these under- 

 ground reservoirs, from which they draw their supplies. 



In these deep cavities the water does not appear to flow as in subterranean rivers, 

 but rather spreads out in vast basins which communicate with one another through 



