106 
PACIFIC PORTS. 
longitude, but also by means of those lagoons, its sole outlets 
during the dry season. 
The volume of the water of the river is subject to very great 
variations in the course of the year. In the rainy season it 
reaches twelve feet depth, in years of an extraordinary char- 
acter. 
The rainy season usually commences in the month of June 
and finishes in the beginning of October. The Isthmus, in 
general, offers as many different climates as localities, differing 
from one another by their situation, the nature of their soil, the 
atmospheric phenomena, and the position of their mountains in 
respect to the cardinal points. 
The immense basin of La Yentosa presents a safe and com- 
modious harbor to vessels of all sizes. Closed at the west by 
the heights of the Morro, it is open at the south and east. 
This configuration of the bay allows vessels to have ingress and 
egress irrespective of the quarter from which the wind blows. 
Throughout its great extent, and on entering it from the sea, 
no shoals are to be met with; everywhere a good anchorage 
is to be found. The bottom is of compact sand, and a great pro- 
portion of it is mixed with clay. 
The depth is almost regularly graduated : it presents at from 
350 to 8000 feet distance from the shore, a progressive running 
from 17 to 53 feet, and averaging, for the first thousand feet, 
two feet increase per hundred feet, and about six inches per 
hundred feet for the following thousand feet. 
The greatest difference that has been observed in the level of 
the water was six and a half feet. 
Besides the variable winds, which are rather light, and the 
land and sea breezes of the morning and evening, two prevalent 
winds, the north-northeast and south-southwest winds, reign 
during a great portion of the year on the southern coast of the 
Isthmus. The first of these two atmospheric currents is not felt 
at sixty miles east of La Yentosa, beyond the Barra de Tonala ; 
nor at sixty-two miles west, beyond the mountain of Chahuhe, 
which bounds on the west the lagoon of Tengulunda. * 
The north-northeast wind usually begins to blow about the 
15th of October and ceases in the forepart of April. In the 
