Point Isabel is approached from the sea through the Brazos de Santiago. It is a wild and desolate sea coast, defended by bars and strewn with wrecks. In former years, a small Mexican village and fort, containing a couple of cannons, stood upon the Brazos Point, but during one of those terrific storms which ravage the Mexican coast, the sea rose above the frail barrier of shifting sand, and when the tempest subsided, it was discovered that the village and fortification had been engulfed beneath the waves. Few places are more inhospitable on the American coast than the bar of Brazos. There is no friendly shore under whose protecting lee ships may seek safety during the awful hurricanes that so often descend upon them without a moment's warning. But when a vessel has fairly passed the entrance, she moves along securely over the waters of the bay, and anchors under cover of the sand hills to the left whilst her passengers and freight are landed in boats or lighters. On a bluff promontory jutting out into the bay and sloping gradually inland, stands the village of Isabel. Its houses denoted the character of its people. The spars of wrecked vessels, a few reeds, and the _debris_ of a stormy shore, thatched with grass and sea weed, formed the materials of which they were built, while a vagabond race, fifty or sixty in number, constituted the official but smuggling population, which was prepared to protect the revenue of Mexico or receive bribes from contrabandists, as their interests might dictate. A certain Señor Rodriguez was the captain of this important port at the period of our occupation; and, being a person equally ready to take pay from importers or exporters of goods as well as to receive further compensation for concealing his roguery from the government, he deemed it his duty, as a faithful officer, to destroy the custom house by the conflagration that incensed General Taylor against the prefect of Tamaulipas.[102] Such was Point Isabel and its vagrant inhabitants, when abandoned to our forces, and adopted as a depot. * * * * *