216 



MEXICO, CENTEAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



flows in a swift current seawards through a rocky gorge about 600 feet deep, 

 but with scarcely six feet at the bar. From this bar to the Polochic delta there 

 is a clear waterway of about 60 miles navigable by schooners. 



North of the Golfo Dulce and its straits the only important river is the 

 Sarstun, whose lower course has been chosen as the frontier towards British 

 Honduras. Farther north the quadrilateral space comprised between Tabasco, 

 Yucatan and Belize is drained partly by the Usumacinta, and partly by the Rios 

 Mopan and Hondo, leaving only a few lakes dotted over the northern savannas 

 with no outflow. The largest of these is Lake Itzal, so named from the Itzas, a 

 Yucatan nation which took refuge on its shores in the fifteenth century. It is 



Fig. 92. — Golfo Dulce aot) the Lowee Motagtta 

 Scale 1 : IJÔOtioo. 



Depths. 



also called Peten, or the " Island," from an isolated hill where the immigrants 

 founded their first settlement. Peten has the form of an irregular crescent, with its 

 convex side facing north-westwards, and is divided into two basins by a peninsula 

 projecting from its south side. Enclosed between low limestone banks, the lake 

 rises several yards during the rains, while in some places it has a normal depth 

 of over 180 feet. Some of the creeks, however, are shallow enough to develop a 

 rich growth of waterlilies, whose seeds in times of scarcity are ground and 

 kneaded to a sort of bread Avhich is astringent but little nutritive. Peten is at 

 present a closed basin, but other lacustrine depressions scattered over the savannas 

 appear to have formerly connected it on one side with the San Pedro affluent of 

 the Usumacinta, on the other with the Rio Hondo, which flows to Honduras Bay. 



