37 
advantageous means of effecting the desired communication 
every endeavour was made to ascertain the course and volume 
of the waters of the several rivers, without being deterred by 
their distance from the localities pointed out hitherto as the 
most favourable for the purpose. Amongst them all, particu¬ 
lar attention was directed to the river Ostuta, remarkable for 
the volume and regular course of its waters, which were said 
to flow into the Pacific by the bar of Tonal a. 
The origin of this river is unknown and has never been ex¬ 
amined from the popular belief that it proceeds from a spot 
so rugged among the mountains as to be almost inaccessible. 
In the course of the operations it was found that the river 
Ostuta does not discharge itself into the Ocean by the bar of 
Tonala as had been supposed, but that after having formed the 
lagoons, situated in the neighbourhood of St. Francisco, it 
flows through the Barilla and the mouth of Lagartero, in the 
Duic-nahuanot. 
It may be well to observe, that although the waters of the 
Chicapa and of the Ostuta are always limpid, this is only to be 
understood of the upper part of their course, for in the plain 
during the rainy season they often gather the sands of the al- 
luvious soils through which they flow. 
On entering the eastern lower lagoon, the currents of the 
Ostuta flow along the southern shore, and decreasing gradually 
in their impetus they reach the Boca Barra so pow'erless as to 
deposit there the sands they bring with them ; these are after¬ 
wards shaped into a large sand-bank by the waves, kept in in¬ 
cessant agitation by the northerly wind which prevails almost 
constantly in those regions. 
In the plans which will be proposed, it is intended to make 
use of the waters of the Ostuta, taken from the sierra, in order 
to feed the canal, by doing which the principal cause of the 
formation of this bank would be removed; but as it would not 
be possible to prevent the waters that join the Ostuta in the 
plain from flowing in the same channel, and as this river did 
formerly flow into the lake of Tonala, it would be advisable to 
shape again its course in the primitive direction, an operation 
which offers no difficulty whatever. 
