The
salt is of good quality, is cut out like ice, and it could supply the
world. It has heretofore been a monopoly to the governor of Lower
California, who employed convicts to get out the salt and put it on the
beach ready for shipping. It is carried about a quarter of a mile, and
is sent to Mazatlan and San Blas. A large quantity of salt is used in
producing silver. To the north of Muleje, which is nearly opposite
Guymas, the gulf is so much narrower that it is a harbour itself. No
accurate survey has ever been made of it--indeed, all the peninsula, as
well as the coast of Upper California, is laid down wrong on the
charts, being about twelve miles too far easterly. The English
Government now have two naval ships engaged in surveying the Gulf of
California.
"On the Pacific coast of the peninsula there is the great Bay of
Magdalena, which has fine harbours, but no water, provisions, or
inhabitants. Its shores are high barren mountains, said to possess
great mineral wealth. A fleet of whale-ships have been there during the
winter months of the last two years, for a new species of whale that
are found there, represented as rather a small whale, producing forty
or fifty barrels of oil; and, what is most singular, I was assured, by
most respectable whaling captains, that the oil is a good paint-oil (an
entire new quality for fish-oil).
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