Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/428

408, long, low and sandy, though to the south stretching out into gloomy, faintly-seen woods. We can distinguish the distant yellow sand and the white surf breaking furiously over the bar. The day is gloomy, but not cold. A slight rain accompanies the light north wind. Sea gulls are flying in circles round the ship and skimming the surface of the waves. The master looks impatient and anxious, and prognosticates another week of northers. Vessels, they say, have been detained here thirty days, and some even three months! No notice is taken of our signal—a sign that the bar is impassable.

16th.—The ship has rolled and pitched all night, and to-day we remain in the same predicament.

2em

Yesterday morning the wind was much lighter, and a pilot boat came out early, in which the captain set off with his despatches; and we being assured that we might cross the ominous bar in safety, hired a boat for forty dollars, with ten sailors and a pilot, too glad at the prospect of touching the solid earth, even for one day. Having got into this boat, and being rowed out to the bar, we found that there the sea was very high, even though the day was calm. The numerous wrecks that have taken place here have given this bar a decidedly bad reputation. Great precaution is necessary in crossing it, constant sounding, and calm weather. It is formed by a line of sand hills under the water, whose northern point crosses that to the southward, and across which there is a passage, whose position varies with the shifting