Lieutenant Harrison distinguished himself while the _Cyane_ was blockading Mazatlan a little later. Mazatlan was dependent on the coasting trade for food, and the blockade reduced the town to a short allowance. Small schooners, however, managed to slip past in the shoal water alongshore, and the small boats of the _Cyane_ had to look after them. On one occasion the _Cyane_ was so far out from the beach that the Mexicans launched four big barges and put out to capture Harrison, who had three small boats with perhaps a third of the Mexican force in men. It was clear that Harrison could easily outrow the heavier boats of the Mexicans and escape, but instead of doing so he headed straight for them. The Mexicans were supported by field-guns on the beach, but they fled the moment the Yankee fire began to tell. The American seamen showed a feeling toward the enemy that was very much like that the English had showed for the French sailors in the wars with Napoleon. And it is certain that the self-confidence was commonly justified in both wars. On September 30, 1847, Lieutenant Craven of the _Dale_ pulled up a creek at Mulijé and captured a schooner that mounted a nine-pounder without opposition, although more than one hundred soldiers were in the town. And the next day he landed with eighty men and drove one hundred and forty Mexicans three miles inland. [Illustration: SCENE OF Naval Operations in GULF OF MEXICO.] However, the fights were in reality skirmishes between small bands on both sides. The Mexicans had no navy, and they did not gather their soldiers in sufficient force at any point to permanently dislodge the Americans. Commodore Shubrick eventually had exclusive command of the American squadron, and he held the entire coast north of Acapulco. He would have held it to Salina Cruz or Ocos if he had had a few more men for garrison duty, but that was not necessary, for the hand of fate was against the Latin-Americans, and California was destined to become, because of the efficiency of the work of the Navy, a part of the United States; and it is now one of the most beautiful as well as one of the richest States of the American Union. The work of the Navy in the Gulf of Mexico began during the battle of Palo Alto, when Commodore David Conner, who commanded the American squadron assembled off the mouth of the Rio Grande, landed about five hundred of his men to help protect the garrison which General Taylor had left at Point Isabel. [Illustration: Landing of Perry’s Expedition Against Tabasco. _From a lithograph designed and drawn on stone by Lieutenant H. Walke, U. S. N._]