Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/234

214 There are no reliable data as to the exact time when the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa was erected; but the works must have been commenced between the years 1582 and 1625. At the former date the island was occupied only by sailors and merchants; at the latter the fortress is mentioned by the traveller Gage, in connection with his visit to Vera Cruz, and appears to have been then well advanced. It was probably the strongest fort in the New World, and until the improvements made in modern warfare was considered almost impregnable, being often termed the San Juan de Acre of America. In 1746 it was mounted with one hundred and twenty guns and three mortars. In 1780 it contained one hundred brass cannon and about fifty pieces of ordnance made of iron, the latter being of heavy calibre. The main building was in the shape of a parallelogram, with a bastion at each of its angles. The one at the southwest corner was named the bastion of San Pedro and was completed in 1633. It was surmounted by a high tower on which was a revolving light. On the south-east corner was the bastion of San Crispin, completed in 1710. Here was built a lookout tower whence vessels were sighted and communication maintained with the city by a system of signals. Others named Our Lady del Pilar and Santa Catalina were finished in 1778 and 1799 respectively. The curtain and the flanks of the bastions facing seaward were covered with stakes of hard wood sharpened at the end and rising a foot and a half out of the water, so that at high tide vessels could not approach within musket shot. Within the fort were seven large cisterns, containing nearly a hundred thousand cubic feet of water, and below it were damp, narrow dungeons, where notorious criminals were confined. Few who were once incarcerated there came forth alive.

At the middle of the eighteenth century the