While off the shore in the harbor one afternoon I caught a shark measuring a little over six feet in length, which gave me a tussle of about a quarter of an hour before I could pull it alongside and plunge a knife into its heart. This last operation, be it observed, was not so much to end its own sufferings as to prevent those of other and better fish, and maybe a human being or so, in the near future. The natives told me, however, that it was only the large spotted or tiger shark, a species seldom seen there, that will deign to mistake the leg of a swimmer for the early worm that is caught by the bird. None of the shark kind enter the inner harbor where a sensible person would naturally bathe, as he wants enough water to hide his movements from his prey, and this condition seldom exists in the inner harbor. Indeed its name, Guaymas, borrowed from that of an Indian tribe, means a cup of water; and it is aptly applied, for the harbor is so landlocked and protected that seldom more than the slightest ripple disturbs its mirror-like surface, although breezes that will waft sailboats prevail throughout the day.
A VIEW OF GUAYMAS HARBOR.
As a further part of my fishing experience we caught a number of perch-like fish called by the people cabrilla (meaning little goat-fish, on account of some fancied resemblance to that animal, so numerous in the settled parts of Mexico), and which is pronounced the sweetest fish known on the Pacific coast. They are not as big as one's hand, and, of course, it takes a great many of them to make a mess for a few persons, but once a mess is secured it cannot be equaled in all the catches known to the piscatorial art. Another fish that we secured, and which the natives call boca dulce (sweet mouth), looked like a German carp. It had a pale blue head, weighed from two to four pounds, and seemed to run in schools, with no truants whatever to be found outside the school. One might fish a day for the boca dulce and never get a bite, but on the instant one was caught you could haul them in over the side of the boat as fast as you could bait and drop your hook, the biting ceasing as suddenly as it began. They are a delicious fish for eating, and should Guaymas ever become the large-sized city which its favorable position seems to promise, the boca dulce will furnish one of the leading fishes for its market.
While we were there the United States Fish Commission steamer Albatross came into the harbor from a long cruise in investigating the fishes of the Gulf of California, and Captain Tanner of the United States Navy told a small party of us that there were enough fish in the Gulf of California to supply all the markets of Mexico and the United States. Singularly enough, nearly all this great fish supply in the Gulf was along the eastern coast of this American Adriatic, or on the Sonora and Sinaloa side, rather than on or along the coast of Lower California. A good system of railways to the interior mining camps is needed to make this great supply available to the wealth of this naturally wealthy, but now poorly developed country. This will inevitably come, for no one can travel in Northern Mexico without clearly seeing it has a grand and wonderful future ahead, that will greatly strengthen us if we are in the ascendant, and that can correspondingly hurt us in an hour of need if we are not. The tide is rapidly setting in our favor, if we take proper advantage of it.
When I first sailed on the waters of the Gulf of California, some eighteen years ago, its commerce, although small indeed, was three-fourths in the hands of Europeans, while to-day three-fourths of it is American, and only the other fourth European. We labor under one disadvantage, however, and that is we do not attempt to cater to another's taste, even though to do so would be money in our pockets. There are peculiar lines of cheap prints and cottons made in Europe that are sold only on the west coast of Mexico, not a yard finding its way to any other part of the world. Now, while our goods command higher prices, and a great deal finds a market there, it does not "exactly fill the bill," and Americans, probably from not knowing the real wants of these people, do not manufacture the needed articles, and drive foreign stuff from the Mexican market. The ignorance of our people as to the commercial value of Mexico, and especially those parts off the principal lines of railway, is certainly great, and is losing us money now, and a more important influence later. Our enormous advantage of contiguity is pressing us forward in spite of ourselves, and we ought to sweep nearly every line of commerce in Mexico from the hands of foreigners—a fact that is most emphatically true of the northern part of that rich territory.
After cooking our lunch of cabrillas and boca dulces on the northern or inside shore of San Vincente Island we made a visit to the caves on the southern or seaward face of the same island. This led us through a little gorge between two high, beetling cliffs, into which the sea had excavated the caves we were to see. Through, or rather under, this gorge the waters pour into a small underground funnel of the solid rock before they reach the little lagoon beyond. At all hours the reverberation of the rushing tide is like thunder, as it beats backward and forward in its prison. The upper crust of the funnel is pierced with occasional holes and crevices, and at certain stages of water these are the mouths of so many spouting geysers, as each wave comes in and beats against the stone roof that confines it. Woe to the person who tries to cross just as a high wave reaches its maximum strength in the cave beneath! He will get the quickest and most effectual bath of his lifetime. Once on the seaward face a long line of caves is presented to view.