ElVEES OF GUATEMALA. 215 



both sides by deep ravines. But the Motagua flows, not through one of these 

 eroded valleys, but through an older fissure belonging to the original structure of 

 the land. After its confluence with the copious affluent from the Esquipulas and 

 Chiquimula, the Motagua becomes navigable for small craft. From this point it 

 follows a north-easterly course, skirted on both sides by picturesque wooded 

 heights all the way to its mouth in Honduras Bay. Daring the floods it is a 

 bro-id and deep streim, navigable for over 100 miles in a total length of 300 miles. 

 But the approach is obstructed by a bar at the mouth of the chief branch in the 

 delta, which has usually scarcely more than three feet of water. The other 

 branches are also inaccessible to vessels of large draught, and the whole of the low- 

 lying alluvial tract is a region of swamps and backwaters fringed with mangroves, 

 almost as dangerous to approach from the land as from the sea. So unhealthy is 

 the district that the inlet enclosed by the long promontory of Très Puntas, pro- 

 jecting north-west towards Amatique Bay, is called Hospital Bay. This inlet 

 is connected with the main stream by a partly artificial channel ; but the true 

 port of the fluvial basin lies, not in the delta, but immediately beyond it at the 

 foot of the last spurs of the Sierra del Mico. Here is St. Thorn xs's Bay, the best 

 haven along the whole Atlantic seaboard of Central America. After rounding^ 

 a dangerous sandbink large vessels penetrate through a narrow channel into a 

 circular basin enclosed by an amphitheatre of wooded hills. Here is ample space 

 for hundreds of ships in a perfectly sheltered sheet of water with a superficial area 

 of six square miles and depths ranging from 14 to 30 feet. 



Like that of Motagua, the Polochic basin is entirely comprised within 

 Guatemalan territor3\ Although a smaller stream, it is navigable by flat- 

 bottomed boats for about an equal distance from its mouth. Rising in the Cohan 

 mountains, which here form the divide towards the Usumacinta valley, the 

 Polochic flows almost due east to its junction with the Cahabon, which descends 

 from the Sierra de Chama to its left bank below Telemau. Like the Motagua it 

 ramifies through several arms at its mouth, where numerous shoals bar all access 

 except to light flat-bottomed craft. The delta, however, lies not on the Atlantic, 

 but on an inland sea known as the Golfo Dulce or Izabal Lagoon. This "golfo" 

 certainly appears to be a lacustrine basin rather than a marine inlet, for it 

 has not the slightest trace of salt, and during the floods its level rises about 40 

 inches. It has a mean depth of from 35 to 40 feet, and as it has an area of 

 over 250 miles, it might easily accommodate all the navies of the world but for 

 the shallow channel through which it communicates with the sea. 



Towards its north-east extremity the current, elsewhere imperceptible, begins 

 to be felt ; its banks, here low and swampy, gradually converge, and the Golfo 

 Dulce becomes the R,io Dulce, whose depth falls in some places to ten or twelve 

 feet. Lower down the water grows more and more brackish, and the Rio Dulce 

 enters another basin, whose saline properties betray its marine origin. Below the 

 Golfete or " Little Gulf," as this basin is called, the banks again grow higher, 

 developing cliffs and escarpments, where the lianas, twining round the branches of 

 great forest trees, fall in festoons down to the stream. During ebb-tide the water 



