8 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Mayaguez, lying between Punta de Algarrobo and Punta de Guanajibo, is scarcely 
more than an open roadstead and affords safe anchorage only during the favorable 
season. Puerto Peal de Cabo Rojo and Ensenada del Boqueron also have safe 
anchorage only when the winds are favorable. The south coast has a larger 
number of bays or other indentations, but the only harbors which vessels of regular 
draft can enter are Guanica, Ponce, and Jobos. Guanica Bay is a spacious basin, 
completely landlocked, and with adequate depth of water. The entrance to this 
beautiful harbor is only about 100 yards wide, with high hills on either side. The large 
bay at Ponce is simply a broad, open roadstead. Jobos Harbor, some 35 miles east of 
Ponce, has recently been found by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to possess a 
good depth of water and to be exceptionally well protected. Arroyo, the port of 
Guayama, has a fairly safe roadstead. At the east end of the island is a pretty safe 
harbor inside of Punta Lima and Cayo Santiago, near Hucares and Punta de Santiago, 
the ports, respectively, of Naguabo and Humacao. A similar harbor is found at 
Puerto de Fajardo, between Punta de Mata Redonda and Cabeza de San Juan. 
COASTS. 
The northern shore of Porto Rico rises nearly everywhere abruptly from the 
sea, with very little beach anywhere. There is but a narrow strip of shallow water, 
and less than 100 miles offshore is the Brownson Deep, one of the deepest holes in 
the world, where soundings of 4,561 fathoms have been taken. This coast is also 
remarkably free from fringing islets. The east and west ends of the island are lower 
and have considerable stretches of sandy or gravelly beach, with an occasional man- 
grove swamp and a few small islets fringing the shore. The south coast is nearly 
everywhere low, with long reaches of sandy beach and mangrove swamp. This 
shore, as well as portions of the east and west shores, is fringed throughout much 
of its length by beautiful coral reefs composed chiefly of fan, stag-horn, and brain 
corals. The small keys along the coast are also often surrounded on one or more sides 
by coral reefs. 
TOPOGRAPHY. 
Viewed from the sea, as one approaches Porto Rico from the north, the scene is 
one of very great beauty. The island appears as a great mass of remarkably rough, 
irregular mountains, rising abruptly from a narrow coastal plain, and in many places 
astonishingly steep. Seen from the north these mountains are steep, but beautifully 
rounded and covered to their summits with rich green vegetation. As seen from the 
south the slopes are longer, the individual peaks less numerous, and the vegetation 
not so luxuriant. As has been well said by Mr. Robert T. Hill — 
There is little regularity in the arrangement of these mountains; there is no definite crest line, 
but the peaks rise from a general mass, whose sloping sides are deeply corrugated by drainage ways. 
Their surface has been etched by erosion into innumerable gabled lateral ridges (or cuehillas), 
separated by deep V-shaped gorges. * * * The main range of mountains extends from Mayaguez 
through Adjuntas and Aibonito to Humacao on the east. This is the Cordillera Central west of 
Aibonito and the Sierra de Cayey east of that place. Near the center of the island a range 1 bifurcates 
from the main line and runs to the northeast as the Sierra Luquillo. 
’This range contains El Yunque, the highest peak on the island. Its height probably does not 
exceed 3,300 feet, and the summits elsewhere seldom exceed 2,000 or 2,800 feet. 
