Point Martin Garcia where the western side of Ocoa Bay is regarded as terminating also marks the beginning of another large bay, Neiba Bay, which has the form of a cul-de-sac, with a length of eighteen miles and an average breadth of seven miles. It is open to the southeast, but in all other directions is well protected by high mountains. The water is of ample depth and there are several good anchorages, the best being the port of the small city of Barahona. From Neiba Bay to Cape Beata the coast waters are shallow and are only visited by small vessels which come to take away lumber or coffee from the neighboring heights. At Cape Beata, the southernmost cape of the Republic, the coast turns northwest, to the Pedernales River, which forms part of the boundary between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Several small bays indent this portion of the shore, the one most favorable for shipping being Las Aguilas Bay, also known as Bahia sin Fondo, or Bottomless Bay. This part of the country, the Baboruco peninsula, is very sparsely inhabited. In the beginning of the nineteenth century it was the abode of maroons, half-savage fugitive slaves and their descendants. Four miles to the southwest of Cape Beata lies Beata Island, sloping down from an elevation in the south to a long point in the north. Its greatest length is about 7 miles, its maximum breadth 3 miles, and access is difficult as the only anchorage is on the eastern side almost two miles from land. The island is covered with dense forests in which wild cattle abound. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the island was a convenient resort for the pirates that infested the Spanish main; at one time it is said to have contained fine plantations, but at present it is only occasionally visited by Dominican or Haitian fishermen. Rising precipitously from the sea, at a distance of about ten miles southwest of Beata Island, is a huge bell-shaped mass of rock, 500 feet in height, almost two miles in length and a mile in width. It reminded Columbus of a giant ship under full sail, wherefore he named it Alta Vela, or High Sail, sometimes corrupted to Alto Velo. The valuable deposits of guano on the rock induced a party of Americans in 1860 to take possession of it in the name of the United States as an ownerless guano island, but upon protest by the Dominican authorities the American government promptly recognized the superior rights of Santo Domingo. Visible from far out at sea, with a lighthouse on its summit, the great granite peak stands like a sentinel guarding the southern shore of the Republic.