GEOGRAPHY OF CALIFORNIA. 13 



Indians, who dive for them to the depth of twenty or more feet, and of 

 whom a large proportion are annually drowned or devoured by sharks. 

 A company, formed at London in 1825, sent Lieutenant Hardy to the 

 Californian coast, with two vessels, carrying diving-bells, by the aid of 

 which it was expected that the pearl fishery might be conducted more 

 safely, as well as profitably, than by the ordinary means; but, unfortu- 

 nately, it proved that the oysters always lie in crevices of the rocks, to 

 which no access can be had by persons in the diving-bell, and the enter- 

 prise was, in consequence, abandoned. The value of the pearls obtained 

 appears to be trifling when compared with the time and labor employed in 

 the search for them. In 1825, eight vessels engaged in the business col- 

 lected together five pounds of pearls, which were worth about ten thousand 

 dollars. Occasionally, however, a single stone is found of value sufficient 

 to afford compensation for years of fruitless labor ; and some of the rich- 

 est pearls in the regalia of Spain are the produce of the fishery in the 

 Californian Gulf. 



■ The territory extending east from the Californian Gulf to the summit 

 of the great dividing chain of the Anahuac Mountains, forms two politi- 

 cal divisions of the Mexican republic, of which the northern is called 

 Sonora, (a corruption of Senora,) and the southern Sinaloa. These 

 countries are, as yet, thinly inhabited : from the general productive- 

 ness of their soil, the salubrity of their climate, and the number and rich- 

 ness of their mines of gold and silver, they seem calculated for the support 

 of a large population, for which the gulf, and the many rivers flowing 

 into it from the mountains on the east, will afford the means of communi- 

 cating with other lands. The port of Guaymas, in Sonora, in latitude of 

 27 degrees 40 minutes, is said to be one of the best on the Pacific side 

 of America. Mazatlan, in Sonora, at the entrance of the Californian 

 Gulf, has been, hitherto, more generally frequented ; but it is neither so 

 secure as Guaymas, nor is the territory in its vicinity so productive or 

 healthy. South-east of Mazatlan, in latitude of 27 degrees 29 minutes, 

 is .San Bias, the principal commercial port of Mexico on the Pacific, one 

 of the hottest and most unhealthy spots on the globe ; and still farther, in 

 the same direction, are Navidad, Acapulco, and the harbor of Tehuante- 

 pec, all celebrated, in former times, as places of trade, but now decaying 

 and deserted. 



The peninsula of California is about one hundred and thirty miles in 

 breadth where it joins the continent, under the 32d parallel, that is to say, 

 nearly in the same latitude with the city of Savannah, in Georgia. 

 Thence it extends south-eastward, varying, but generally diminishing, in 

 breadth between the Pacific on the west and the Californian Gulf on the 

 east, to its termination in two points — Cape San Lucas, the south- 

 westernmost, in latitude of 22 degrees 52 minutes, corresponding nearly 

 with that of the city of Havanna, in Cuba — and Cape Palmo, 60 miles 

 east by north of the other, at the entrance of the Californian Gulf. 



Continental California extends, upon the Pacific, from the 32d parallel of 

 latitude, where it joins the peninsula, about seven hundred miles north-west- 

 ward to Oregon, from which it is divided, nearly in the course of the 42d 

 parallel, — that is, nearly in the latitude of Boston, — by a chain of highlands 

 called the Snowy Mountains, the Sierra Nevada of the Spaniards. Its 

 boundaries on the west are not, as yet, determined politically by the 

 Mexican government; nor do geographers agree with regard to its 



