584 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, them in the history of the Buccaneers, and by other early navigators in 
these seas. In consequence of a current setting out of the Gulf of Cali- 
Pec- fornia we were more to leeward than we were aware, and, with a view 
1827 ^ 
of, saving time, passed through the channel between the two northern- 
most islands. In doing this we were becalmed several hours, and fully 
verified the old proverb, that the longest way round is often the 
shortest way home. 
This channel appears to be quite safe ; and in the narrowest part 
has from sixteen to twenty-four fathoms water ; but the ground in other 
places is very steep, and at two miles distance from the shore to the 
westward there is no bottom at a hundred fathoms. When the wind 
is from the northward it is calm in this channel, and a current some- 
times sets to the southward, which renders it advisable, on leaving the 
channel, to take advantage of the eddy winds which intervene between 
the calm and the true breeze to keep to the northward, to avoid being 
set down upon St. George’s Island. We found these islands twenty 
miles further from San Bias than they are placed on the charts. 
The next morning the mountains on the mainland were seen 
towering above the white vapour which hangs over every habitable 
part of the land near San Bias. The highest of these, San Juan, 6,230 
feet above the sea, by trigonometrical measurement, is the best guide 
to the road of San Bias, as it may be seen at a great distance, and is 
seldom obscured by fogs, while the low lands are almost always so. 
In my chart of this part of Mexico I have given its exact position. 
When the Piedra de Mer can be seen, it is an equally certain guide. 
I’his is a rock about ten miles west of the anchorage, a hundred and 
thirty feet high, with twelve fathoms water all round it. 
The afternoon was* well advanced before we anchored in the road 
of San Bias, and the refreshing sea-breeze, sweeping the shores of the 
bay, had already dispersed the mist, which until then steamed from the 
hot swampy savannahs that for many miles surround the little isolated 
rock upon which the town is built. The inhabitants had not yet re- 
turned from Tepic, to which place they migrate during the tiernpo de 
las aguas ; the rainy season, so called from the manner in which the 
country is deluged with rain in the summer time. 
