Eastern Pacific High Sea

This stretch of open Pacific lies off the Xalisco coast of western Mexico, where the Sierra Madre Occidental drops toward the sea and short rivers carry silt and driftwood out over the shelf. Xalisco, the Nahua-speaking province inland, sent canoes and salt to the coast, and its people caught fish and turtles along the shore. In 1530 Nuño de Guzmán's Spanish army marched into the Xalisco country and conquered its towns, after which Spanish ships used the offshore waters to bring supplies and to search the coast for passages westward.