the Fishes of Sinaloa Author:David Starr Jordan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FISHES OF SINALOA. BY DAVID STARR JORDAN, Assisted by EDWIN CHAPIN STARRS, GEORGE BLISS CULVER AND THOMAS MARION WILLIAMS. [With Plates xxvi-lv.] ... more » The Mexican State of Sinaloa lies along the east shore of the Gulf of California, mostly to the north of the Tropic of Cancer, extending from Rio Fuerte on the north, which separates it from Sonora, to the northwest boundary of Jalisco. The greatest length of the State along the coast is about 325 miles. The land forms an irregular and broken slope from the high table-lands and cliffs of the Sierra Madre on the east downward to the coast. Down this slope flow several streams of clear water, which acquire great volume in the rainy season (June to November) and which dwindle rapidly in the dry season of the winter. The coast line is very irregular, being formed of rocky islands, mostly of volcanic origin, and of abrupt cliffs or " rincones," the terminations of hills or spurs from the Sierra Madre. Between these are long curved sand beaches, and occasionally sand-spits across the mouth of some estuary which is thus converted into a lagoon. The water of the sea off the coast is very clear. The bottom is very irregular, as is the contour of the shore. The chief port of Sinaloa is Mazatlan. This city of about 20,000 inhabitants lies on a peninsula between the Estuary or Astillero de.Mazatlan on the south and a curving bay known as the Puerto Viejo on the north. On this peninsula are two considerable headlands, Neveria on the north and Vijia on the southwest, between which is a sand beach, facing the west, noted for its high surf, forwhich it is named las Olas Altas. North of Puerto Viejo, at a distance of about seven miles, are three large rocky islands, very much alike, close together and in a right line, known as the thre...« less