With my companions, however, the case was different. The _Teniente_
could never cease being surprised that the commercial and naval
facilities of the splendid bay before us had been so long overlooked.
"What a place for a naval station, with its spacious and secure
anchorages, abundant water, and facilities for making repairs and
obtaining supplies! Why, all the fleets of the globe might assemble
here, and never foul spars or come across each other's hawsers! What a
site, just in that little bay, for a ship-yard! The bottom is pure
sand, and there are full ten fathoms of water within a hundred yards of
the shore! And then those high islands protecting the entrance! A fort
on that point and a battery over yonder would close in the whole bay,
with its five hundred square miles of area, against every invader, and
make it as safe as Cronstadt!" But what astonished the _Teniente_ more
than anything else was, not that the English had seized the bay in
1849, but that they had ever given it up afterwards. "Bull should
certainly abandon his filibustering habits, or else stick to his
plunder; the example was a bad one for his offspring!"
And as for H., our artist, he, too, was surprised at all times and
about everything.
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