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April. J COAST OF CALIFORNIA. 197 



arrived on Wednesday, the 6th, and anchored in three fathoms of 

 water, with the south point of the bay bearing south-south-east, which 

 completely sheltered us from all winds. About eight miles from the 

 anchorage, in the direction of north-north-east, is the town and mission 

 of Rosario, to which place there is a good road from the head of this 

 bay. 



For the first time during our present voyage, we found ourselves 

 moored in a North American port, within four hundred leagues of the 

 south-west boundary of the United States, and yet more than thirteen 

 thousand miles distant from it by water ! Near to our native land, 

 and yet far from it ! A narrow peninsula only divided us from the 

 Gulf of California, once celebrated for its pearl-fisheries. Although 

 this gulf is a great estuary, or arm of the sea, eight hundred miles in 

 length, and one hundred and twenty in breadth at its mouth, running 

 that whole distance parallel with the coast on the Pacific, and some- 

 times not more than thirty miles from it — still, in geographical strict- 

 ness, the Gulf of California is only the continuation of the river Colo- 

 rado, which rises in the same mountains that give source to the Rio 

 del Norte, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico ; to the Arkansas, 

 which pours its waters into the Mississippi ; and to the Columbia, 

 which empties into the Pacific Ocean, from the Oregon territory. The 

 sources of these three rivers are near each other, which fact will, at 

 some future period, prove of immense importance to the United States. 

 The river La Platte also rises in the same region ; which, after run- 

 ning a course nearly due east, falls into the Missouri, about six hun- 

 dred miles by water, above the junction of the Missouri and the Mis- 

 sissippi, which is eighteen miles above St. Louis, on the right bank of 

 the Mississippi, the principal depot for the immense regions drained by 

 those numerous rivers, the congregated waters of which are here col- 

 lected into one great stream. 



I think I hazard little in asserting, that long before another century 

 rolls round, the principal avenue of trade between the United States and 

 the different seaports on the Pacific Ocean will be the river Colorado, 

 as connected with the Gulf of California. The China and India trade 

 will, of course, ultimately flow through the same channel ; which will 

 render this route to the Pacific far more eligible than that of the river 

 Columbia can ever become. This prediction might be warranted on 

 the difference of latitude alone ; the Gulf of California entering the 

 Pacific in lat. 23° N., while the mouth of Columbia River is a little 

 farther north than the parallel of St. John's, New-Brunswick, on the 

 Atlantic coast. The mouth of the Gulf of California is nearly on the 

 parallel of Havana, in the island of Cuba. 



In the language of the late scientific William Darby, " it is impos- 

 sible to view a map of North America, and carefully examine the course 

 of its great rivers, without appreciating the prodigious commercial and 

 political advantages of the Colorado route. By it the Pacific Ocean 

 is entered twenty-three degrees of latitude farther south than by the 

 river Columbia ; and by the former, also, the ship-channel is much 

 deeper into the body of the continent than by the latter. An approxi- 

 mation towards the tropical regions of Polynesia, India, and China 



