NAUTICAL REMARKS. 
661 
westward, attended by heavy rains, and thunder and lightning. It is besides the sickly 
season, and the inhabitants having all migrated to Tepic, no business whatever is transacted 
at the port. 
It is high water at San Bias at 9h. 41 m., full and change; rise between six and seven 
feet spring tide. 
MAZATLAN. 
The anchorage at Mazatlan, at the mouth of the Gulf of California, in the event of a 
gale from the south-westward, is more unsafe than that at San Bias, as it is necessary to 
anchor so close to the shore, that there is not room to cast and make a tack. Merchant vessels 
moor here with tlie determination of riding out the weather, and for this purpose go well 
into the bay. Very few accidents, however, have occurred, either here or at San Bias, 
as it scarcely ever blows from the quarter to which these roads are open between May and 
December. 
There is no danger whatever on the coast between Piedro de Mer and Mazatlan; the 
lead is a sure guide. The island of Isabella is steep, and has no danger at the distance of a 
quarter of a mile. It is a small island, about a mile in length, with two remarkable needle 
rocks lying near the shore to the eastward of it. 
Beating up along the coast of Sonora, some low hills, of which two or three are shaped 
like cones, will be seen upon the sea-shore. The first of these is about nine leagues south of 
Mazatlan, and within view of the Island of Creston, which forms the port of Mazatlan. A 
current sets to the southward along this coast, at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles a day. 
Having approached the coast about the latitude 0123=^ 11' N., Creston and some other 
steep rocky islands will be seen. Creston is the highest of these, and may be further known by 
two small islands to the northward of it, having a white chalky appearance. Steer for Creston, ' 
and pass between it and a small rock to the southward, and when inside the bluff, luff up, and 
anchor immediately in about seven and a half fathoms, the small rock about S. 17'^ E., and 
the bluff W. by S. Both this bluff and the rock may be passed within a quarter of a 
cable s length ; the rock has from twelve to fifteen fathoms, within thirty yards of it in every 
direction. It is, however, advisable to keep at a little distance from the bluff, to escape 
the eddy winds. After having passed it be careful not to shoot much to the northward of 
the before-mentioned bearing (W. by S.), as the water shoals suddenly, or to reach so far 
to the eastward as to open the west tangent of the peninsula with the easte 7 -n point of a 
low rocky island S. W. of it, as that will be near a dangerous rock, nearly in the centre of the 
anchorage, with only eleven feet water upon it at low spring-tides, and with deep water 
all round it. I moored a buoy upon it ; but should this be washed away, its situation 
may be known by the eastern extreme of the before-mentioned low rocky island, be- 
tween which and Battery Peak there is a channel for small vessels, being in one with a 
wedge-shaped protubera^ice on the xeestern hillock of the northern island (about ’three miles 
north of Creston), and the N.W. extremity of the high rocky island to the eastward of the 
anchorage being a little open with a roch off the mouth of the river in the N. E. The south 
tangent of this island will also be open a little (4°), with a dark tabled hill on the second 
range of mountains in the east. These directions will, I think, be quite intelligible on 
the spot. 
