over the spur of the hill on our
right and dipping down into a shallow valley, along which we passed,
steering a southerly course for a pair of steep, lofty hills, the
summits of which were within half a mile of each other. The more
southerly of these two was the one for which I was bound, and an hour's
steady climbing carried us to the top of it, when we lay down in the
long grass among the bushes, and, regardless of insects and possible
reptiles, snatched a catnap while we waited for daylight.

At daybreak we roused up, and, making our way to a clear space on the
very summit of the hill, looked abroad at the scene. Seaward, the ocean
stretched away, a vast plain of delicate blue, to the horizon, and some
twenty miles in the offing we made out a speck of white, gleaming in the
brilliant morning sun, which we decided must be the schooner. Then,
turning our backs upon the sea, we had the hilly foreground of the
island before us, sloping away to right and left and in front of us down
to the smooth, placid waters of the spacious harbour. On our right was
the Boca Chica, the only entrance to the harbour, a narrow, winding
channel with a sort of bar at its inner extremity, whereon, Hoard
informed me, there is scarcely four fathoms of water. Nevertheless,
viewed from the elevation which I occupied, the navigation of the
channel appeared simple enough, the submerged sand-banks on each side of
it showing up quite clearly through the blue water. At the inner
extremity of the channel lies the outer harbour, a sheet of water
roughly circular in shape, and measuring some four miles across in
either direction. I noticed a few small shoals dotted about here and
there in this outer harbour, but there was only one that appeared to be
at all dangerous, and that one was to be easily avoided. The northern
boundary of the outer harbour seemed to be pretty well defined by a
cluster of decidedly dangerous shoals stretching right across from the
island of Tierra Bomba to the mainland, but with fairly wide channels of
deep water between, and north of this lay what might be termed the
intermediate harbour. This is a sheet of water of about half the area
of the outer harbour, with a good clean bottom and plenty of water. It
is formed by a shoal uniting the island of Tierra Bomba with the
mainland, a reef of rocks projecting above the sand and rendering the
Boca Grande--once the main entrance to the harbour--quite impassable by
anything