As the Tabasco takes a sudden turn to the S. W. at the entrance of the Chilapa, a stranger might mistake the latter for the former, their breadth is nearly the same at this place. From the mouth of the Chilapato the entrance of Laguna del Viento is about half a mile, and it is on the larboard hand going up. This lagoon is very large, insomuch that we could not see the land in the S. E. direction, except an island or two; the breadth of the Chilapa at this place is about a quarter of a mile or less, and there are only a few trees on the banks of the river; above, the river gradually contracts in its breadth; at half a league from the mouth, is the entrance of the Arroya de Jaboncillo, (in the rainy season it is joined to the Laguna del Viento), this is navigable for a few leagues up, and has been taken for the Chilapa, but the Jaboncillo runs in a S.E. direction, whereas the Chilapa takes a turn to the S.W. After passing the Arroya, the larboard or eastern shore should be kept aboard, as about a mile farther up are two branches running off from the Chilapa to the S.W.; the lower one being an Arroya, and the upper one is an entrance to a lagoon, into these the current sets strong. The river then makes a turn to the S.E., and from the Laguna to the Coginicuil, about fifteen leagues, there are no more branches; the current is also much less, and throughout the whole distance, with very few exceptions, the banks are covered with lofty trees, which have a beautiful appearance from the number of parasites which hang from the branches; particularly the moss which hangs down in long festoons, as in the Mississipi. In going through the Chilapa, after the first league, the courses are of no service and the topsails can only be of any use where the wind is through the reaches, which are not of any length, the river making short turns.

The Chilapa in its narrowest part is not less than twenty fathoms wide, but the average is about thirty fathoms, and with all its beauties soon looses its effect, as there is no change, being the same thing one day after another, the same narrow confined view, with lofty trees, and only a solitary canoe passing now and then, besides which, the progress in going up the river in a vessel is extremely tedious, the greatest part has to be warped through. In the morning and evening a few birds may be seen, but the greatest part of the day every thing has the stillness of a desert; the silence of the night is only broken by the loud croaking of the bull frog, or in the early part by the chirping of innumerable insects in the woods, or previous to a norther, in addition, the howl of the Cayote; for from the entrance of the Chilapa to within three leagues of the Coginicuil, which is at the first rancho, there is not even a solitary hut. At this place several families reside who are employed in cutting log wood in the adjacent forest, and cultivate a patch of ground to grow maize for their own use, but not sufficient by a great deal for their consumption. The second rancho is within a league of the former, and the third rancho is about fifteen leagues from the mouth of the Chilapa, and one league from the Coginicuil; these ranchos are on the left bank of the river or south side; very little supply can be had or even expected from them; at the third rancho the ground is more cultivated than in

the other.

The Chilapa above the Coginicuil is a much broader stream than NO. 6.-VOL. XV.

2 R

below, the rauchos are frequent, and the ground is cultivated for growing maize, pumpkins, plantains, &c., and in some of them orange and banana trees are planted. Poultry, pigs, and eggs can be purchased, and sometimes fish, but as the latter are plentiful in the river, they can be caught by going early in the morning or in the evening with small hooks near the logs of drift wood which lay along the banks of the river; game is at times plentiful; the best time for shooting is in the morning before the sun is powerful, and up the small rivulets; there are two or three kind of snipe, one as large as a pullet, also curlew, spoon-bill, and a number of others; in the Lagunas, which are not far from the river, are an immense quantity of geese and ducks in the season of the northers, but the former are very difficult to get near, and but seldom shot.

About one and a-half leagues above the Coginicuil is the Rancho de Magano, which deserves more particularly to be mentioned than any of the others, as being better arranged; there are several huts, or more properly speaking, houses here, built mostly of cane filled in with mud for the walls, and palm leaf roofs, larger than ordinary, situated close to the banks of the river under the shade of some high trees; here many families reside, and are employed in cultivating several acres of ground, cutting logwood and fishing. In going up to Tepititan in a canoe we stopped here for an hour and looked over this establishment; there were about thirty men, women, and children altogether, chiefly of a mixed race between the negro and Indian; most of them (the adults), had been slaves when Mexico was a Spanish colony; the whole of them were clean in their dress, such as it was, as also were the houses; every thing had the appearance of their being in circumstances far above want, but in Tabasco and most parts of Mexico, as labour is plentiful, the industrious have no occasion to suffer from distress. At the rancho they had planted a number of cocoa trees, the first place where we had seen any, except a few at the Frontera. We got a supply of excellent oranges, and were asked to come into their houses to take a tortilla, not as a Spanish compliment, but as a proof of their intentions; when we declined taking any, they sent a quantity to the canoe for our use. The men were at the time preparing their lines with a great number of hooks on each for fishing; they catch fish at times in great quantities, which they salt and send for sale to the different towns; we bought a few from them, the flavour of which was not unlike salted salmon, weighing several pounds each. They also catch a large quantity of Peje Lagarto in the neighbouring lakes; these are cured by thrusting a piece of wood, (a stake), through them, and cooking them over a slow fire, which smokes them at the same time, as they are neither scaled or cleaned, and being very tenacious of life, they are often half cooked before they are dead.

SECOND REPort of the TIDAL HARBOURS COMMISSION.

(Continued from page 240.)

It appears also that a rubble-stone dyke or embankment extends seven miles along the Cheshire side of the river, " on a line the most injudiciously laid out with regard to navigation;" that this dyke, a portion of which is covered at half-tide, is only marked by insignificant perches or beacons; that several vessels have struck on it, some of which have been entirely lost; that the river, from Flint upwards, is neither lighted nor buoyed; that a weir or mill-dam rising eleven feet above the bed of the river, exists just above the city, dams the water up for several miles, and prevents the upward flood of the tide; that loads of stones are thrown into the river to secure the foot of the jetties; and that at Parkgate, twelve miles below Chester, which formerly was one of the principal mail-packet stations between England and Ireland, a dry sand now extends almost across the estuary.

We abstain from comment on such a state of things, and it is only necessary to add, that the Act of Parliament appointed commissioners, selected out of the neighbouring landed proprietors and citizens of Chester, to see that the Dee Company fulfilled their engagements.

On the south coast, at Salcombe, there are neither pilots nor a harbour master. At Dartmouth, a small but deep-water harbour, there is neither buoy nor beacon to mark the shoals, nor a light worthy of the name, while two-thirds of the income are applied to corporation purposes. At Exeter loud complaints are made that the South Devon Railway is carried round the coast, although the inland line would be five miles shorter; that it has materially diminished the estuary of the Exe, excluding the tidal water; that it has cut off from all free communication with the sea the bathing towns of Dawlish and Teignmouth, and that in many parts it is carried even below high-water mark; that the prospects of the fishermen in that neighbourhood are thereby absolutely ruined, and that should a vessel be wrecked there in an onshore gale, no boat or raft can possibly reach the shore.

On the north-east coast, the river Tyne and port of Newcastle, including North and South Shields, take the lead among the principal coal ports of the kingdom, which, owing to the vast increase in steam navigation, are daily rising into greater importance. Newcastle has shipped upwards of two millions of tons of coal per annum for the last quarter of a century; her foreign trade has risen to half a million tons yearly, and the revenue derived from the river and paid to the City Corporation, who by charter are conservators of the port, amounts to 19,000l. a-year, exclusive of 60007. annually levied by the Trinity Board for primage, buoyage, &c. Where all seems so prosperous, it is an ungrateful task to point out that such a state of things may be deceitful; yet so it assuredly will prove to be on the Tyne if the river be much longer abandoned to itself, as, generally speaking, it has been till within the last few years. The improvements proposed by Mr. Rennie thirty years since have, with the exception of a quay at Newcastle, been left unexecuted; the width of the river remains extremely

irregular, in some places the channel being only 60 yards wide; sharp angles increase the difficulty of navigation; upwards of 80 acres of sandbank, dry at low water, still disfigure the bed of the stream; Newcastle bridge, with its 9 narrow arches, heavy piers and additional starlings, acts almost as a mill-dam; a loss of five feet range of tide, in the distance of about twice as many miles, takes place between Tyne bar and Newcastle quays; coal staiths are projected irregularly into the stream; and no dock accommodation has been provided, while Shields Harbour, the daily resort of hundreds of colliers, is so inconveniently crowded that damage frequently occurs.

Sunderland is indebted less to nature and more to art than the neighbouring port of Newcastle; here extensive stone piers project into the sea, by the aid of which several feet of water over the bar have been obtained, and the enterprise of the coal-owner and ship-builder, and the skill of the engineer, have been rewarded by a revenue of 16,0007. a-year, derived from an extensive home-trade in coals, and a rapidly increasing foreign traffic. This port, however, is capable of much improvement; the quays are private property, and much out of order; the moorings were so indifferent, that owing to the pressure of the ice, in the winter of 1841 the whole of the shipping in the harbour broke adrift, and the damage done was estimated at 30,000l.; the foundation of a part of the south pier is so insecure that the scouring of the sea has undermined its foot; the entrance of the north docks is far from being well placed; so heavy a swell ranges along the piers, and into the harbour, that the engineer has been obliged to take down a large portion of the middle of the south pier in order to make a beaching place for the swell to expend itself upon; and a general complaint is made of the want of dock accommodation, affording an easy outlet to the southward in north-easterly winds.

Hartlepool owes its rapid rise chiefly to its southern outlet, the want of which is so much felt at Sunderland. This fortunate position has been in some measure seconded by the Dock and Railway Company, who have now a floating dock of 20 acres, where they can load 5000 tons of coal a-day; while the entrance is allowed to be one of the most easily accessible of any of the tidal harbours along this coast. The success of this port has induced the formation of a Hartlepool West Harbour Dock, about half a mile to the westward, the works of which are in an advanced state. But as it is hardly to be expected that two rival companies in the same port should agree upon any general plan for improvement, some independent control, free from local bias, seems to be absolutely essential. Complaints are made of ballast and stone being thrown over the cliff and washed into the harbour; that the bight of the bay is filling up with mud and silt, caused by sluicing out of the Slake, and the fishermen with one voice declare their fishing ground has been thereby destroyed.

Stockton-on-Tees, including Middlesborough, is one of the most thriving of our coal ports. The channel of the river has been contracted and deepened; the approaches are admirably lighted; a floating dock of mine acres has recently been opened at Middlesborough; the traffic

and revenue of the port have doubled within these few years, and in 1845 the Darlington Railway Company leased the whole of the harbour dues, and declared it a free port. All is bustle and activity, and all seems to prosper. Yet even here, on a closer inspection, the want of some control is manifest-the quays are nearly all private, and are falling into the river; the piers of the bridge are only supported by the loads of stone thrown down at their foot; rocks of whinstone impede the upper navigation, and cause damage to the barges; the entrance of the dock at Middlesborough, completed but five years since, is only thirty feet wide; while about 2000 acres of the estuary, have been enclosed, and the corresponding tidal water excluded; and the channel over the bar, which formerly ran out due east, has, in consequence, changed to N.N.E. Great complaints also are made of the want of a harbour of refuge in the neighbourhood, and of a beacon on Redcar rock, upon which vessels are annually wrecked.

Whitby has a revenue of 3,600l. a-year, derived from a passing toll on coal borne by shipping, specially imposed "for the improvement of the harbour." It offers to shipping, in return, a west pier of fine Whitby stone not placed in the best direction, which projects 100 yards beyond the east pier, and causes an eddy at the entrance; a circular head, inviting the run of the sea into the harbour; an entrance onethird too wide; a rocky bar, that might easily be blasted, on which more than one ship has broken her back; a mill-dam that stops the upward flow of the tide; a railway-dam, recently made, which excludes 30,000 cubic yards of water on every spring tide; ballast and the rubbish of the town thrown below high-water mark and behind the west pier; and a dry harbour.

Scarborough, for some unexplained reason, has been denied the passing toll that has been continued to Whitby and Bridlington, immediately adjacent. The limited funds at the disposal of the trustees have been recently applied in deepening the eastern harbour, and in erecting a self-registering tide-gauge at the pier end. This is the first instance. on this part of the coast, of proper attention to the phenomena of the tides, on which most of these harbours are dependent for their existence, and it is an example well worthy of imitation by the more wealthy neighbouring ports.

Bridlington, like Whitby, has enjoyed a passing toll on coals for the last 150 years; like Whitby, too, it offers in return an harbour dry at low water; a north pier, built with public money at a very great cost, yet not even carried out to low water; no quay accommodation; a heavy range of swell along the pier, so that no moorings will hold the vessels; and a pier-end light furnished with a single candle; yet Bridlington bay is the only good shelter in northerly gales on this coast; and in a continuance of such winds, 300 vessels may be seen lying here under shelter of the Smithwick Sand, which helps materially to break the sea, and offers an admirable foundation for a breakwater, the construction of which would supply the great want of this part of the coast, by making a harbour of refuge of Bridlington bay.

Kingston-upon-Hull takes the lead as the first port in the kingdom