Page:Narrative of a Voyage around the World - 1843.djvu/398

340 which I only obtained in flower previous to our arrival at this place."

The navigator has no hidden dangers to fear; all are above water. After rounding the Frayles from the westward, he may safely stand for the houses, dropping his anchor in fifteen fathoms. The bad season is supposed to commence in June, and terminate on the 1st of November.

About four, on the 24th, we reached San Blas. The sun was obscured, and there were evident signs of the rainy season not having entirely ceased; the people looking cadaverous and inanimate. Having received my despatches, and learned that a transport was waiting at Mazatlan with stores and provisions, we weighed at dawn, and, favoured by a fresh S. E. breeze, reached that port in twenty hours; rather an uncommon passage.

Unfortunately we found the rains still falling, and that our stores and provisions had been warehoused in the Custom-house stores, thus giving us the additional trouble and expense of re-embarkation. No time was lost in effecting this, the delay affording me time to test our magnetic instruments previous to our homeward and long cruise.

The contents of my instructions authorising my return by the western route, via Tahiti, and other points highly interesting in a magnetic point of view, it became important that a strict scrutiny should take place before my departure, under as great variety of temperature and exposure as I could