A la California - Chapters I-II



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CHAPTER I. MY FIRST PASEAR 
The Sierra Morena and the Redwood Forest of San Mateo and Santa Cruz.--The 
Sportsman's Paradise.--Looking back at the Golden City.--Yesterday and To-
day.--Along the Bay of San Francisco.--The Valley of San Andreas.--Harry 
Linden's Speculation in Oats.--Good Resolutions and what came of them.--A 
Dream of Tropic Life.--An Evening on the Mountains.--A Scene of Wonderful 
Beauty.--The Avalanche from the Pacific.--Descending the Mountain by 
Moonlight.--The End of my Pasear. 

STRETCHING away southward from the Golden Gate, at the northern point of 
the peninsula of San Francisco, through San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, 
San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties, in 
Alta California, and thenCe on down through the entire peninsula of Lower 
California to Cape St. Lucas, on the border of the tropics, is an almost 
unbroken range of mountains, known at different points by different names, 
and presenting the wildest Variety of scenery to be found in any mountain 
range in North America. 

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Just back of the Mission Dolores, on the southern boundary of the city of 
San Francisco, they rise from low hills into minor mountains, and are 
known as the Bernal Heights, and Mission Mountains. Farther southward they 
increase in height, and become clothed in forest. Twenty miles south of 
San Francisco they form a majestic sierra, and thence, for some distance, 
are designated as the Sierra Morena. Still farther south they are known as 
the Coast Range of Santa Cruz, and farther yet as the Gabilan Mountains. 
Along this range, in San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties, is one of the 
largest, if not the largest, of the redwood forests of California. This 
forest-belt is from ten to twenty miles in width from east to west, and 
from thirty to forty miles in length from north to south, and contains 
timber enough to build twenty San Franciscos. The redwoods nowhere come 
down to the Pacific coast, and the traveler on the San Francisco and San 
Jos Railroad catches so few glimpses of them that he would never dream of 
the existence of such a forest; while from the decks of passing steamers 
one sees only small patches of them in the caons, miles back in the 
interior. The giant redwood--to which family the big trees of Tuolumne, 
Calaveras, and Mariposa Counties belong--flourishes best at a high 
elevation and in a warm, moist atmosphere. This great forest, like that of 
Mendocino, crowns the mountains with tropical luxuriance, and is watered 
by the mists which, rising for a considerable part of the year from the 
bosom of the Pacific, are driven inland by the trade-winds and condensed 
on the mountain 

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slopes, keeping the rank vegetation which clothes them almost perpetually 
dripping. The redwoods themselVes rise to a height of one to three hundred 
feet or more, and attain immense size. Beneath their shade springs up an 
almost impenetrable undergrowth of flowering shrubs and trees--California 
lilac, tea-oak, pine, ceonotus, laurel, or the fragrant bay, buckeye, 
manzanita, poison-oak, the giant California honeysuckle, which, half bush, 
half vine, rises to a height of ten to twenty feet, and from its thousands 
of trumpet-shaped flowers, tinted like the wild crab-apple blossoms, loads 
the atmosphere with a delicious perfume and last, but not least, the 
madroo, pride of the forest, and fairest of all the trees of earth. These 
woods are for the most part in a native state. Here and there the axe and 
saw-mill have made sad havoc, but in the more mountainous and least 
accessible localities the forest stretches unbroken for miles and miles, 
and silence reigns supreme. Horse trails are few, and the dense 
undergrowth and the ruggedness of the country make traveling almost 
impossible. Here the grizzly bear hides in security, and from his mountain 
fastnesses sallies forth at intervals to forage on the flocks and herds, 
orchards and gardens, that dot the lowlands. Here also the California lion,
wolf, fox, mink, raccoon, wild-cat, lynx, deer, eagle, and great vulture 
abound, within hearing of the whistle of the locomotive which sweeps 
through the valley of Santa Clara, and almost within reach of the echoes 
of the guns of Alcatraz, and the bells of the Golden City. It is still, to 
the great majority of the residents even of San Francisco, a 

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terra incognita, and for years to come will be a veritable hunter's 
paradise. Quail, doves, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels, hares, and other 
game, are found everywhere, and the pure mountain streams swarm with the 
beautiful spotted trout of California. 

Parties of ladies and gentlemen from San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa 
Clara, San Jose, Santa Cruz, and Pescadero, skilled in woodcraft and wise 
in the ways of adepts with the gun and rod, make excursions into this 
tangled wilderness, camp out, hunt, fish, pic-nic, and enjoy themselves 
for weeks at a time annually; but to the general tourist and the great 
world at large the country is as little known as the savage and 
inhospitable wilderness of central and northern Australia. 

Between this forest and mountain country, and the shore of the Pacific, 
there is a narrow but productive farming and grazing country, but seldom 
visited by travelers, as it lies off the main lines of communication, 
though quite readily accessible from San Francisco. This too has its 
attractions for the tourist who is not sight-seeing by the guide-book, and 
much that is novel, curious, and enjoyable may always be found there. 

The Spanish language has many words and terms having no equivalent in the 
English tongue, which are so identified with the geography and every-day 
life of California that they have become engrafted upon our local 
vernacular, and must forever form a part of it. Among the most expressive 
of these is the paser. Literally it means to walk, or to take out upon a 
walk, but conventionally it is a journey 

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devoid of business object, a quiet pleasure jaunt, a trip for rest, 
relaxation from care and toil, for recreation. When the lazy days of 
summer come, you ask for your San Francisco friend the doctor, the lawyer, 
clergyman, or merchant, and the chances are that you will be told "he has 
gone on a paser" to the Yosemite, to Lake Tahoe, to the springs, or to the 
mountains where the trout-streams abound. 

The country of which I have been speaking is just the country for an 
enjoyable paser, and many times; when incessant toil in a close, dark 
office, or the too bracing winds of San Francisco had worn me down, and 
made rest, recreation, and a change of air imperative, I have shouldered 
my gun, mounted my horse, and galloped away to these mountains, there to 
find refuge from care, anxiety, and exhausting labor, purer air, lighter 
spirits, a better appetite, and, in the end, perfect health again. 

It was a bright September afternoon when I started on my last paser out 
toward the Sierra Morena, mounted on brave old Don Benito, a veteran 
campaigner in Algiers and Mexico, who had borne me many a weary mile over 
the hot sands of the desert, up and down the red mountains, and through 
the Apache-haunted wilds of Arizona. My son and namesake,--I would say 
heir, were it not that it would seem like A. Ward's last joke, in view of 
the present extent of my landed estates and the condition of my 
exchequer,-----as bold a rider a skillful fisherman as any boy of twelve 
may be; accompanied me, mounted on his plucky and spirited little 
California mustang, his pet and companion for 

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years. Out through the dusty streets of the city proper, and through the 
Mission Dolores, we rode at a gallop, and only paused, at length, to allow 
our fretting horses a moment's rest, and look back upon the city we were 
so gladly leaving behind us, from the heights beyond Islais Creek. It is, 
after all, a goodly city, and a goodly sight to look upon from these 
hills; and as we look down upon it, and upon the ancient mission which 
stood there, as it stands to-day, when the site of San Francisco was a 
track-less, uninhabited waste, the beautiful lines of one of California's 
most gifted writers, Ira D. Colbraith, come vividly to our memory: 

"Little the goodly Fathers, 
Building their Mission rude, 
By the lone untraversed waters, 
In the western solitude, 

"Dreamed of the wonderful city, 
That looks on the stately bay 
Where the bannered ships of the nations 
Float in their pride to-day; 

"Dreamed of the beautiful city, 
Proud on her tawny height, 
And strange as a flower upspringing 
To bloom in a single night. 

"For lo! but a moment lifting 
The veil of the years away, 
We look on a well-known picture 
That seems hut as yesterday. 

"The mist rolls in at the Gateway 
Where never a fortress stands, 
O'er the blossoms of Sancelito, 
And Yerba Buena's sands 

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"Swathing the shores where only
The sea-birds come and pass,
And drifts with the drifting waters,
By desolate Alcatraz; 

"We hear, when night droops downward,
And the bay throbs under the stars,
The ocean voices blending
With ripple of soft guitars; 

"With chiming bells of the Mission,
With passionate minors sung,
Or a quaint Castilian ballad
Trilled in the Spanish tongue. 

"Fair from thy hills, O city,
Look on the beautiful bay!
Prouder far is the vision
Greeting our eyes to-day; 

'Better the throngd waters,
And the busy streets astir,
Purple and silken raiment,
Balsam and balm and myrrh; 

"Gems of the farther Indies,
Gold of thine own rich mine,
And the pride and boast of the peoples,
O beautiful queen, are thine! 

"Praise to the goodly Fathers,
With banners of faith unfurled!
Praise to the sturdy heroes
Who have won thee to the world!" 

[image caption: LEAVING TOWN.]

Descending from these heights, the road--the San Bruno turnpike--winds in 
and out for miles along the bluff shores of the Bay of San Francisco, and 
the views, changing at every turn, are wonderfully diversified and 
beautiful. At one point we saw a land-locked basin, in which a dozen 
Italian fishermen's boats lay rocking idly, and at another we 

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paused to watch a party of "dagos," who were wading in the bay up to their 
necks, hauling a seine, while their felucca-rigged craft rode at anchor as 
it might have done in the Levant or the Grecian Archipelago. Cut out that 
section of the blue bay, with the felucca and its crew of red-capped 
fishermen, put it into a frame, and you have a matchless "Scene in the 
Levant," by one of the very oldest of the masters. Great white pelicans 
winged their way in silence over the waters, and flocks of gulls, shaugs, 
and crooked-billed curlew, rose as we galloped along. Long streamers of 
snowy vapor hung out like flags of truce from the summits of the mountains 
on the west, and looking back to the north we saw the mist driving in 
through the Golden Gate and scudding across the bay. 

Leaving the shore of the bay at last, some ten or twelve miles from San 
Francisco, we galloped over an open plain, and at San Bruno crossed the 
Southern Pacific Railroad track, and turned by a by-road into a long, 
winding caon leading up to the summit of a range of hills to the westward, 
between which and the higher and forest-crowned Sierra Morena, still 
farther on towards the sea, lies, hidden wholly from the outer world, the 
lovely valley of San Andreas. The plain upon the western shore of the bay, 
and all the Contra Costa and Alameda valley and hill country on the 
eastern side, was brown, and dry, and sear as it ever is in the interior 
of California in summer and autumn; and the valley of San Andreas, 
embowered in shade, and the cool, green, mist-nourished forests on the 
mountains beyond 

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it, grew more beautiful by the contrast as we approached them. 

The Spring Valley Water Company, which derives its water supply for San 
Francisco from the head of the Pillarcitos Creek, in the redwoods, some 
forty miles south of the city, and has a beautiful lake for a reservoir in 
the mountains, was here building another reservoir, equal in size to 
anything on the continent. A dam, seventy feet high, with foundations 
sixty feet deep, has been thrown across the valley and the waters of the 
San Andreas, thus thrown back, form a lake two miles and a half long, and 
containing one thousand million gallons. This is held as a reserve supply 
for dry seasons. John Chinaman did the work, with white men as 
superintendents, and, as is his custom, did it well. He was then at work, 
in the same quiet, methodical way, making bricks for the barriers of the 
flood-gates. John is a law unto himself, and can do a wonderful amount of 
minding his own business within a given time. Pay him regularly what you 
agree to, give him his New Year's holidays, and a chance to supply himself 
with chicken and duck for his Sunday dinner and rice for his regular daily 
rations at fair rates, and he is contentment itself. The question of woman 
suffrage does not worry him, eight-hour laws he holds in contempt, and no 
lazy, jaw-working demagogues can fool him with their plausible sophistries 
into agrarian combinations, strikes, and riots. He is a philosopher in his 
way, and not without claims to respect and better treatment than he 
usually gets from his Caucasian "betters," 

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Winding down the hill-side and around the great reservoir, we enter the 
valley of San Andreas just as the sun is sinking in the roseate bank of 
fleecy mist which, like a great snow-drift, is piled up against the 
mountains on the west to their very summits. The bare plain, and brown, 
verdureless hills weary the eye no longer, but instead fresh green 
chaparral and tall, full-foliaged trees stretch out on every side, and we 
ride down a road embowered with shrubbery, and dark with the cool shadows 
of evening. Coveys of tufted quail rise and whirr away as we gallop on, 
and rabbits creep into the bushes at every turn in the road. At the 
entrance of a caon stands a cottage, shaded by broad, spreading oaks and 
fragrant bay-trees; and by the door, book in hand, sits a fair young 
daughter of California, with great brown eyes, as beautiful as those of a 
sea-lion,--I can think of no more complimentary simile. She tells us that 
game is swarming, and that there will be rare sport for the hunters after 
the 15th of September, when the prohibition on shooting is removed. A huge 
grizzly took possession of the pasture on the hillside opposite the house 
some weeks previously, and stayed there undisturbed for a fortnight, only 
leaving when the wild clover, upon which he came to luxuriate, failed. 
Deer are seen almost daily, and a few days before a lynx, or wild-cat, or 
California lion,--the women could not tell which,--came down to the 
cottage in broad daylight, caught a fowl, and sat down by the door to eat 
it. A lady threw a shoe at the creature, which thereupon trotted off, with 
a growl, carrying his stolen dinner with him. 

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How vivid is my recollection of my first paser in the valley of San 
Andreas! I had started out from San Francisco at the urgent Solicitation 
of my old friend Col. Harry Linden, who then lived here upon an extensive 
mountain rancho, a part of the Dominge Feliz Rancho, determined to leave 
work and the wearing cares of business behind me, and have one good, quiet 
paser with him in his bachelor haunts in the hills. I had brought along my 
gun and any amount of ammunition, with a good supply of fishing-tackle as 
well, and was determined to be up with the dawn and make it very lively 
indeed for everything which wore feathers, fur, or scales, during my stay. 
In the early evening I arrived at the house, and was warmly welcomed by 
Harry, and introduced to the ladies of the family; it was not exactly a 
bachelor's lot after all, and Harry, as I found, was a boarder and a 
petted member of a pleasant and refined social circle, not the solitary 
tenant of a comfortless lumberman's or ranchero's cabin, as I had fancied 
him. We left the ladies sitting under the trees, and went in to supper. 
Harry has always been fancying himself a farmer, and many is the good joke 
that has been perpetrated upon him in the agricultural line. At that time 
he had been doing a big thing in that way. An enthusiastic farmer of 
Alameda County had imported, for seed, from Scotland, at great expense, a 
quantity of black Scotch oats, such as are used for making oatmeal in the 
"land o' cakes." He was very choice with them; would only part with them 
at one dollar per pound, and, in his anxiety to introduce them as 

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widely and generally as possible among the farmers of California, had made 
a positive rule to sell only one pound to any one individual. Harry, not a 
whit less enthusiastic than himself, and, if possible, a. little more 
public-spirited, determined to have a field of those oats which would 
astonish the natives. So he went around among his friends, and got them to 
go one at a time to his importing friend, and purchase a pound of the 
precious oats, each on the pretext of desiring to plant them in their 
gardens to raise seed for hypothetical ranches in the country for next 
season. His virtue and perseverance were fully rewarded. He succeeded in 
getting together, in this manner, fifty-seven pounds of the coveted oats, 
which he proceeded to sow in a nicely prepared field of goodly extent. He 
had sown many a field with oats of the wildest variety in his younger 
days, but never had he regarded the expected crop with such blissful 
anticipations as in this case. He watched and waited. Days grew into 
weeks, and weeks into months, and still no green sprout showed itself 
above the surface of that promising field. Painful doubts began to oppress 
his bosom. He dug down and found some of the oats; they were just in the 
condition in which they were first put into the earth. Sore afflicted in 
mind, he waited yet a little longer, tried them again, and with the same 
result. Then he hurried away to his friend, the public-spirited importer, 
and sought an explanation of the mystery. It was easily given. He, the 
importer, had written to a friend in Edinburgh for "One thousand pounds of 
black oats such as are 

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best liked in Scotland for making oatmeal, clean and thoroughly dry before 
packing for shipment." The order had been filled conscientiously. The best 
ones for making oatmeal are of course kiln-dried, and to insure their 
coming in good condition the shippers had taken the precaution to have 
them dried in an extra hot kiln. They would have made oatmeal, a single 
pound of which would have kept a Scotchman on the scratch for a year; but 
for agricultural purposes he might as well have sown so many hailstones or 
shoe pegs. Had he written that he wanted them for seed, the matter-of-fact 
Scotch shippers would have sent him seed oats; but he wrote for best 
oatmeal-producing oats, and they sent them. The joke had just got out, and 
we discussed it at supper with hearty relish, and one joke and story 
brought on another until the waning hours admonished us it was time to 
retire for the night. 

No one ever had a larger stock in trade, in the shape of good resolutions, 
than myself. I allow nobody to beat me in that line, whatever may be my 
short-comings in other matters. After a glorious night's sleep I awoke 
with the warm sunlight pouring in at my window, and the sweet song of wild 
birds falling on my ears. As I have said, I had come into this 
inexpressibly lovely and secluded valley to hunt wild game, and fish for 
mountain trout, and I arose with the firmest resolution to swallow a hasty 
and early breakfast, saddle up, and be off into the hills without the loss 
of a moment's time. The matter or breakfast was soon disposed of, and I 
went out into the open air and the sunshine. Great 

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spreading buckeyes and California laurels, the fragrant bay, stood in 
groups all around the house; and between two gnarled tree trunks, in the 
fragrant shade, I saw a hammock swinging temptingly. There was a world of 
romance and dreamy remembrances of other days and tropic climes in the 
sight, and--shall I say it?--the cherished daughter of the house, she of 
the soft rippling hair, and great brown eyes, sat near the hammock, in the 
shade, with an open book before her. To see how it would seem to swing in 
a hammock in the shade once more, I stretched myself therein, and, to 
complete the reproduction of my dream of the tropics, drew out a bunch of 
fragrant cigarritas, genuine Havanas, from the factory of "the Widow of 
Garcia,"--rolled one, lighted it, and engaged in conversation with my fair 
young friend. I found her highly educated, refined, accomplished, a 
glorious conversationalist, entertaining, and companionable. The smoke of 
that cigarrita, and another, and another, and another, Went curling up in 
blue transparent wreaths, and floated lazily away. The sunlight filtered 
through he leaves in rippling streams of golden glory, and the soft autumn 
breeze fanned my cheek and played caressingly with the locks upon my 
forehead, grey and harsh no more, but curly and raven-hued again, "in my 
mind's eye, Horatio." The view down the valley, between hills on one side 
clad in deepest green, on the other in brightest gold, to the great Caada 
del Raymundo and the high, forest-crowned mountains of Santa Clara, 
enveloped ill, and glorified by, the soft blue haze of the September 
morning, 

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was poetry itself; and, beggar that I am, I swung in that hammock, smoked 
the fragrant cigarritas, and talked of books and poetry and travel in 
foreign lands, with that fair daughter of the Golden Land, until four 
o'clock in the afternoon. 

I ought to say that I am ashamed of myself; but I am not. I glory in my 
shame! I would do it again, and think none the less of myself and my 
fellow-man--and woman--for so doing. And so would you, my reader, or you 
are no friend of mine,--a blockhead, an idiot, a confirmed misanthrope, or 
something worse. If you do not sympathize with me in this feeling, drop 
the book right here, and never take it up again; you and I will not do to 
travel together. 

All earthly things end sometime and somewhere, and my siesta followed the 
rule. At four o'clock I saddled up old Don Benito, who had been neighing 
and manifesting his impatience to be off for hours, and, with Linden, rode 
up a long, winding pathway in the caon, through the thick, overhanging 
forest of laurel, madroo, live-oak, tea-oak ceonotus, buck-eye, and wild 
cherry, to the summit of the high hill range, above the valley upon the 
west. Doves, and pretty, tufted California quail rose up and whirred away 
into the thickets as we rode along, and rabbits and hares ran before us in 
the pathway, affording us abundant opportunity for using our guns. 

On the summit of the range was a fine wheat-field of two or three hundred 
acres, and there the birds fairly swarmed. We used our guns until the 
sport became such no longer, and then threw ourselves 

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down upon the grass under a tree to admire the quiet beauty and subdued 
grandeur of the scene, and talk of old times and plans for the future. 
Eastward, miles away beyond the valley of San Andreas, the lower hill 
range and the wide marsh-lands, but seemingly at our. very feet, lay the 
blue Bay of San Francisco, flecked here and there with the white sails of 
ships. Beyond this lay a bank of semi-transparent vapor, which had drifted 
in through the Golden Gate and over from the city of San Francisco, and 
grown coralline and roseate-hued with the warm rays of the setting sun. 
This vapor half concealed the shores of Alameda and contra Costa, on the 
eastern side of the bay, and made the high hills of those counties appear 
to come down bold and precipitous to the very water's edge, the 
intervening valley, miles in width, having wholly disappeared. High above 
these hills, magnified and lifted up as it were, and made to look-higher 
than he really is, loomed, like a thunder-cloud against the deep blue sky, 
the dark head of Mount Diablo. 

Looking westward, at our feet was a deep caon, beyond which was another 
range of hills, or more properly mountains, the real coast range, shutting 
out the view of the sea. These mountains are covered with a dark, redwood 
forest at the summit, kept dripping wet by the mist from the Pacific, 
which rolls up over them in an unceasing torrent, white as an Alpine 
avalanche, all day long. An effect is here produced of which I despair of 
being able to give anything like an adequate description. The white vapor 
came rushing over to the eastward 

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towards us, with a current like that of a thousand Niagaras rolled into 
one, and the beholder expects every moment to see it come down the slope, 
cross over the intervening caon, and overwhelm him; but stay as long as he 
may, for hours, days, months, or years, it comes never a rod nearer to 
him. As it meets the hot air ascending from the dry valleys, it is 
dissipated at a certain point and disappears. You behold a mighty 
avalanche, white and solid in appearance as Alpine snows, ever advancing 
to overwhelm you, but never reaching you. Two great eagles with snow-white 
heads circled around and around over the dark caon below us, in which they 
had their nest. There was not a sound save that of our own voices to break 
the stillness of the evening, and, save what I have described, not a sign 
of life to mar the solitude of the scene. The high, rugged mountains of 
Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, robed in deep-green chemisal and crowned with 
feathery redwoods, bounded the view on the south, and made a fitting frame 
for the glorious picture before us, What wonder that we gazed upon the 
enchanting scene, fairly reveling in the feast of beauty and sublimity 
nature had spread before us with such a lavish hand, until the gathering 
shadows of night admonished us that it was time to remount our impatient 
steeds and descend once more to the valley! 

The full, round moon was in the heavens, throwing her mellow light o'er 
all that fairy landscape, as we descended from the mountain height, and in 
fancy we were once more wandering in the mountains of 

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Sonora, or in the savage deserts of Arizona, masters only of the good 
steeds beneath us, and trusting only to the mercy of God and the good 
weapons in our hands and at our saddle-bows for the safety of our lives. 

After supper we sat.beneath the trees around the hospitable casa of our 
friend, and rehearsed the adventures and scenes of old times with a relish 
the stranger to wild frontier life can never know. Harry Linden is my 
senior by some years, and in the ordinary course of nature and civilized 
life should have lost his early penchant for Robinson Crusoe-like 
adventure; but such is the fascination of border life that I believe that 
at this very hour he would exchange all the comforts of the most elegant 
home in San Francisco or New York, and the best spring mattress ever made, 
for a seat by the camp-fire in Apache land, and a blanket and the warm 
sand of the desert for a bed,-and I am just boy enough to do the same at a 
moment's notice, did opportunity offer and duty permit. Sitting here under 
the trees in the valley of San Andreas, surrounded by appreciative friends 
and the enjoyments of refined society, he tells us of a long-planned 
expedition to the least known of the island groups of the Pacific, how one 
of these days he means to have his vessel rigged, manned, and provisioned 
for the trip; and laugh as we may at the idea of his going on such a 
voyage at his age, nothing will shake his earnestness in the project, or 
make him admit for an instant a doubt of his ultimately carrying it out 
successfully. This charm of danger needlessly incurred, 

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toil self-imposed, and reckless adventure in unknown lands, once felt, 
becomes a part of one's very being, and never fully loses its influence 
while life remains. 

Next day my fair friend showed me where to fish for the largest trout, 
helped me with her own white hands to prepare the tackle, and took part 
with us in the sport A few more hours of swinging in the hammock, the last 
cigarrito was smoked, the last story told, and reluctantly I bade my kind 
friends of the valley of San Andreas good-by, beneath the laurel--and the 
buckeye--trees, and, mounting old Don Benito, galloped away toward the 
Golden City. 

We are always happier for having been happy once; and I have lived longer, 
and I hope better, and enjoyed life more, for the recollection of that 
first paser to the valley of San Andreas. And here, as we meet again to-
night, the pleasant memory comes back to us and we talk it over once again 
with keenest satisfaction. In taking leave of our fair young friend I tell 
her that I start for Mexico in a few days for a long paser under tropic 
skies; and, as we ride away in the gloaming of the evening, she bows 
gravely, and, in the soft Castilian tongue, as is the custom of the people 
in Spanish lands, bids me "Adios, Amigo!" adding, with a trace of 
something more than mere conventional politeness In tier voice, "And the 
peace of God be with you!" 



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CHAPTER II. IN THE MISTS OF THE PACIFIC. 
The Crystal Springs.--The Music of the Night.--The California Night Singer 
and the Legend of the Easter Eggs.--The Caada del Reymundo.--Over the 
Sierra Morena.--Down the Coast.--Pescadero and its Surroundings.--Pigeon 
Point and the Wrecks.--A Shipwrecked Ghost.--The Coast Whalers and their 
Superstitions.--An Embarcadero on the San Mateo Coast.--Ride to Point Ao 
Nuevo. 

RIDING on southward down the valley of San Andreas in the cool, quiet 
evening, we came to the Crystal Springs, one of the most beautiful of the 
summer resorts in the vicinity of San Francisco. There is a fine, large 
hotel, with a broad piazza all around it, just the place to sit and smoke 
a good cigar, have a quiet talk with your friends, and admire the beauty 
of the surrounding scenery, brought out in all its loveliness by the full 
autumn moon which was pouring down its full flood of mellow light upon the 
scene. The San Mateo Creek runs through a wild, tangled thicket in front 
of the house; parterres of flowers of every hue, in full bloom, till the 
intervening grounds; and on the west the steep mountain sweeps around in a 
grand curve, forming a magnificent amphitheatre beside which the Coliseum 
is but the toy playhouse of a child. Away back in 

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the air, cutting sharply against the horizon, stand great pines, from 
whose broad-spreading branches float long steamers of green-gray moss, 
giving an air of great age and venerableness to the forest. Densely wooded 
are all the intervening hill-sides with the fragrant laurel, tea-oak and 
many flowering shrubs interwoven with the glorious madroo, whose crown of 
bright-green leaves contrasts so pleasingly with its bark of brilliant 
scarlet-the madroo ought to be the favorite tree with the Fenian 
Brotherhood, who are so fond of seeing the green above the red. Sitting on 
the broad piazza, in the cool evening, we hear the whistle of the 
locomotive at San Mateo, only four miles away over the hills to the 
eastward. As the last faint echoes die away in the caons, a coyote wolf, 
which has been prowling stealthily in the vicinity of the hotel, sets up a 
sharp, shrill yell in answer. Other wolves, far and near--there may be 
half a dozen of them, but it seems as if there were a thousand--take up 
the cry, and in an instant the woods and the night are filled with music, 
not exactly such as Longfellow sings of, but which for want of better will 
serve to induce "the cares which infest the day" to "fold their tents like 
the Arab, and as silently steal away." 

Half a dozen huge Newfoundland dogs, good-natured, lazy fellows enough at 
the best, but anxious to convince the generous public that they are of 
some importance in the world, and make a show of earning their bread and 
butter now that their master is at home, roused from their slumbers by the 
howling 

Page 32

of the coyote, with loud yells dash off into the woods, as if determined 
to exterminate the whole vile race right there and then, taking good care, 
however, to yelp their very loudest at every jump, that the gentlemen in 
gray may have abundant notice of their coming, and get out of the way ill 
time to avoid unpleasant results to either party. I have known valiant 
duelists start out from San Francisco to shed each other's blood, but 
manage to produce much the same result by simply making so much noise as 
to attract the attention of the police, and insure the arrest of one or 
both parties before reaching the field of honor. Instinct and reason are 
much the same in their practical workings after all. 

When the wolves have decamped, and the dogs, with the air of conquering 
heroes, have returned from the bloodless Campaign, and turned in for the 
night, the cigars are smoked out and the stories told, our company breaks 
up, and we retire for the night. Through the open window comes at 
intervals a sweeter music than that to which we have just been listening: 
the low, Sweet song of a little bird of the finch species, which is found, 
though not in great abundance, in all the coast range country of 
California. This little night-singer stays concealed in the thickets all 
day, uttering no note to give notice of his whereabouts; but when the cool 
shadows of the evening fall it comes forth into the gardens, and through 
all the long hours of the otherwise silent night, pours out its sweet and 
plaintive song as if in mourning for the loved and lost. In 

Page 33

size and form it is not unlike the common wild California canary, to which 
it is doubtless allied; but,' curiously enough for a night-singer, its 
plumage is far more brilliant and beautiful, ---- green, orange, and blue, 
with a narrow bar of red on the wings. I have never been able to see it 
save in captivity, but many a night have I lain awake in my home on 
Russian Hill, in San Francisco, and listened to its plaintive little song 
as it flitted among the shrubbery in the garden, wondering what manner of 
bird it might be. One day a Mexican residing in the western part of the 
city, who gains a livelihood by trapping canaries and linnets, offered me 
a pair of these little beauties for two dollars, apologizing for the high 
price by saying that they were very rare and caught with difficulty. 
Struck by their beauty and delicate brilliancy of plumage, I asked him if 
they ever sang. "Oh, yes, seor; but only in the night. You must remember 
the story of the bird which sang all night before the tomb in which lay 
the body of the Saviour of the world"--touching his hat respectfully--" 
after the crucifixion? Well, seor, these birds are of the same!" 

Then the story of the Easter-night singer of far-off Palestine, as I had 
heard it told in other lands, came back me; and going home I read with 
fresh interest the beautiful lines by Fitzjames O'Brien: 

"You have heard, my boy, of the One who died, 
Crowned with keen thorns and crucified; 
And how Joseph the wealthy--whom God reward-- 
Cared for the corpse of the martyred Lord, 
And piously tombed it within the rock, 
And closed the gate with a mighty block. 

Page 34

"Now, close by the tomb, a fair tree grew, 
With pendulous leaves and blossoms of blue; 
And deep in the green tree's shadowy breast 
A beautiful singing-bird on her nest, 
Which was bordered with mosses like malachite 
And held four eggs of an ivory white. 

"Now, when the bird from her dim recess 
Beheld the Lord in his burial dress, 
And looked on the heavenly face so pale, 
And the dear feet pierced with the cruel nail, 
Her heart now broke with a sudden pang, 
And out of the depth of her sorrow she sang. 

"All night long, till the moon was up, 
She sat and sang in her moss-wreathed cup 
A song of sorrow, as wild and shrill 
As the homeless wind when it roams the hill; 
So full of tears, so loud and long, 
That the grief of the world seemed turned to song. 

"But soon there came, through the weeping night, 
A glimmering angel clothed in white; 
And he rolled the stone from the tomb away, 
Where the Lord of the earth and the heavens lay; 
And Christ arose in the cavern's gloom, 
And in living lustre came from the tomb. 

"Now the bird that sat in the heart of the tree 
Beheld the celestial mystery, 
And its heart was filled with a sweet delight, 
And it poured a song on the throbbing night; 
Notes climbing notes, still higher, higher, 
They shoot to heaven like spears of fire. 

"When the glittering, white-robed angel heard 
The sorrowing song of that grieving bird, 
And heard the following chant of mirth, 
That hailed Christ, risen from the earth, 
He said, 'Sweet bird, be forever blest; 
Thyself, thy eggs, and thy moss-wreathed nest. 

"And ever, my child, since that blessed night, 
When death bowed down to the Lord of light, 

Page 35

The eggs of that sweet bird change their hue, 
And burn with led, and gold, and blue; 
Reminding mankind, in their simple way, 
Of the holy marvel of Easter-day." 

I know that in a little time the march of reason will sweep this old 
tradition, as it has already swept away others which were once regarded as 
essentials of the Christian faith; nevertheless I envied the simple, 
uneducated bird-catcher his childlike, unquestioning belief, and the song 
of the sweet night-singer of California will ever henceforth fall upon my 
ear more gratefully for its pleasant association with that story of holy 
marvel, which, although some of us may doubt, we must surely all alike 
admire. 

The sun was high in the heavens, next day, when I said good-by to Albert 
at Crystal Springs, and rode away into the Sierra Morena Mountains. It was 
a California autumn morning,--and, in saying that, I have left nothing 
unsaid in the way of description. Turning southwestward, the road, one of 
the finest I have ever ridden over, winds round and round, in and out, 
along the steep sides of a deep, rocky carton, for miles, ascending by 
regular and easy grades the dividing ridge between the Bay of San 
Francisco and the Pacific Ocean. When nearly at the summit I paused to 
rest my panting horse and look back upon the scene below. And such a 
scene! It was a variation of that described' in the story of my paser, 
but, if possible, even more entrancingly beautiful. Eastward, the Bay of 
San Francisco, calm, unruffled, and blue, glittered in the 

Page 36

sun. The ocean mists rolling in through the Golden Gate half hid the towns 
which skirt the bay. The hills of Alameda, high and etherealized, rested 
like great straw-colored and purple clouds against the horizon; while 
Mount Diablo, monarch of the inland country, reared his dark head into the 
blue sky, above the mists and the lower mountains, like some great rocky 
island, seen from the shores of an unknown sea. Southward, between the 
hills of San Mateo and the Sierra Morena, stretching away for miles toward 
the redwood-covered heights of Santa Clara, lay the ever-beautiful Caada 
del Reymundo. Live-oak groves are scattered through it, and near its 
centre rests a quiet little lake, with an island of green tules in the 
middle. All around the sides of the Valley, among the groves.in the little 
caons, nestle quiet farm-houses, ad in the centre, upon an elevated mesa, 
stands the last relic of the old semi-feudal Spanish-American times. This 
is an adobe house of one story, with broad veranda, formed by the wide 
roof being carried out all around. No garden, no grainfields, not a single 
fruit-tree flourishes near it. The ranchero who built it and dwelt here 
among his herds, and paid tribute to the Holy Mother Church and the Most 
Catholic monarch, Don Carlos "of Spain, and India King," some eighty years 
ago, thought the country capable of no higher improvement, and dreamed not 
of the paradise it was to become when he and his should give place to the 
stranger who dwelt beyond the great Sierra Nevada somewhere. He built no 
roads, planted no trees, and left behind only 

Page 37

??? low-roofed jaical, and the musical Spanish name which he gave to the 
valley. 

On again. One of those curious blue-and-brown birds, with peaked cap and 
tail as disproportionately long as that of a peacock, called here a "Road 
Runner," and in Mexico "El Correro del Camino,"--the courier of the road,--
which never flies if it can avoid it, but runs with a speed which 
distances the fleetest horse, darted along in the road ahead of us. I 
galloped after it, vainly trying to get within shooting distance, until, 
tired of the sport, it jumped over the side of the mountain and 
disappeared in the bushes of the caon below. The road is cut most of the 
way out of the solid rock, and you look down from time to time almost 
perpendicularly into caons hundreds and hundreds of feet. It is a 
succession, on a modified scale, of Cape Horn and the scenery on the South 
Fork of the American River in the Sierra Nevada, on the Central Pacific 
Railroad route, and at the same time on a scale quite large enough to try 
to the utmost the nerves of timid travelers. 

The flying mists, which had been scudding in broken clouds over the 
sierra, lifted and rolled away as I crossed the summit and began to 
descend towards Spanish Town. The Pillaritos Creek murmured hundreds of 
feet below, in the narrow caon, near the mouth of which, half hidden iii 
shade-trees, is the hamlet of Spanish Town. Beyond rolls the deep-blue 
waters of the broad Pacific, and Half-Moon Bay lies a few miles to the 
northward. I pass a wayside house where the yard is 

Page 38

full of goats and everything speaks of Spanish-Americanism. 

A woman with lustrous black hair and eyes, and oval, olive-hued face, 
comes out with her black shawl or rebosa, folded Andalusian fashion around 
her head and shoulders. The Moors left those eyes, and that oval face and 
tawny-olive skin, in Spain; but the little girl who follows her has a 
fairer complexion, a sharper-cut face, and light-brown hair. Thus, little 
by little, we are conquering Spanish-America. At a little roadside grocery 
a whole family of Mexican or native Californians are in attendance. I 
called for a real's (ten cents) worth of apples, and they weighed me out 
four pounds; one holding the scales, another putting in the apples in a 
pail which a third held, while the rest looked on. It took the whole 
family to sell just ten apples; but such is "el costumbre del pais, 
seor'"--the custom of the country, sir; and who is to commit the sacrilege 
of innovation? 

Two miles above Spanish Town, at the toll-gate, is a small, neat farm, 
owned by an intelligent American, past the meridian of life. As he came 
out to take the toll, I engaged him in conversation. He has one hundred 
and sixty acres, nearly one hundred of which are under cultivation. In the 
valley he raises beans, onions, fruit, etc., and on the hilltops he has 
his early potato-fields, from which he sends to market the finest potatoes 
in December, January and February, after the lowland crops have become 
"old" and less salable, He has three acres of strawberries in full 
bearing. These he irrigates, 

Page 39

and thus secures fine crops all the year round. He sometimes gets as high 
as a dollar per pound for strawberries at Christmas and New Year's, and he 
estimates that the crop yields him, on an average, twenty cents per pound 
in coin the year round. He has no family, and wants to sell out and go to 
Santa Barbara, where he has relatives. He thinks his farm, with 
improvements, is worth forty dollars per acre. The potato and onion-fields 
he rents to a party of Portuguese. There is a family of Mexicans upon the 
upper end of his ranche, but most of his neighbors are Germans though the 
population of the town is about equally divided between native 
Californians, Americans and Europeans. His sole companion is a Chinaman, 
who carries on the strawberry culture and does the housework, and is, as 
he told me, worth any other two men, though he gets but two thirds the 
wages. He could not say much for the society of the neighborhood, nor can 
I. 

Spanish Town contains little to attract a stranger. Turning southward 
here, the road runs through a rich, sloping plain, between the ocean and 
the mountains, and for eight on ten miles poses through one continued 
grainfield The country was parceled out at first in great ranches of many 
thousand acres, each held under Spanish or Mexican grants. These have been 
sold to Americans, and cut up to some extent into smaller portions, but 
the farms are still immense, and far too large for the most profitable 
cultivation. Barley and oats, principally the latter, are cultivated. The 
crop was cut months ago, but owing to the lack of "steamers," as the 
inhabitants 

Page 40

here term the Steam thrashing machine, most of it still lies in the fields 
ungathered. The straw becomes blackened by the fog, but the grain does not 
seem to suffer much. Thrashers were at work all along the road, and great 
piles of grain in sacks waiting to be hauled to Half-Moon Bay and shipped 
to San Francisco, were seen in many fields. The harvesting is done mainly 
by extra hands hired by the day. I met dozens of them tramping along the 
dusty roads, with their blankets on their backs. They do not stay long in 
a place, but get from two to three dollars in coin and their board for 
such time as they work, and then move on. Some of the old California 
Mission Indians still reside here, and work in the fields; and Chinamen 
are making their way on the farms and in the dairy. They get from fifteen 
dollars per month to nine dollars and fifty cents per week, and board 
themselves. A few get as much as two dollars per day in the harvest 
fields, and are highly spoken of by the farmers, many of whom, however, 
are laid to give them employment, lest their fields of grain and stacks 
should be fired in revenge by the European laborers, who are savagely 
opposed to them. The farms in the hills are smaller and more closely 
cultivated. Onions, beets and mustard are largely grown. 

The great beets of California are among her vegetable wonders, and have 
often sorely taxed the credulity of Eastern people. Californian though I 
am, I must own up that there is something just a trifle like an imposition 
on outsiders in this matter of the production of these mammoth beets. This 

Page 41

is the way the thing is done. The largest beet in this soil may attain a 
weight of fifty or sixty pounds the first year; I do not think any grow 
larger. One is Selected, carefully dug up, so as not to injure the root, 
in the fall, and housed during the rainy season. Then it is replanted in 
the spring, and instead of going to seed, as it would if left in the 
ground all winter, continues growing, and in the fall it is again dug up 
and housed, having probably attained a weight of eighty or ninety pounds. 
Next year it grows perhaps to one hundred or one hundred and ten pounds--
the largest on record weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds, and was 
raised in Santa Cruz county--but now it is "played out," in California 
parlance, and wild not grow another year. How they manage to raise lettuce 
seven feet in circumference, and cucumbers five feet two inches long and 
eight inches in circumference, such as are often on exhibition in the 
California Market, San Francisco, I do not know--but they do it. 

The soil here is wonderfully rich, and often, as I have seen myself, from 
ten to twenty feet in depth, of a black loam, like that of the western 
prairies. 

The road winds along the bold shore of the Pacific for miles-now passing 
over steep divides, and again descending to the bottom of precipitous 
caons. At times the view of the ocean, for a long distance up and down the 
coast, is unobstructed, and from one height I counted not less than 
fifteen whales spouting at intervals as they sported in the calm blue 
waters, or sought their accustomed food 

Page 42

along the edges of the kelp-fields, which in many places extend far out to 
sea. Whales have their parasites and minor annoyances as land-lubbers 
have, and sometimes they become so annoyed by the barnacles which fix 
themselves upon them that they run into shallow water and endeavor to rid 
themselves of their tormentors by rubbing their huge carcasses upon the 
sandy bottom. It not unfrequently happens that in so doing they venture 
too far in shore, and, being caught by the surf or the receding tide, are 
stranded and finally left to die high and dry upon the land. Every year 
whales are thus stranded on the beach in the Vicinity of San Francisco, 
and their bones may be seen at frequent intervals scattered all along the 
shore from Point Lobos southward for many miles. 

Meeting by the way an old Mission Indian, who, as he told me, was born and 
had always lived near Pescadero, ad could hardly speak a word of English, 
though well posted in the Spanish tongue, I asked him how far it was to 
Pescadero. "Possibly a mile, or a league, or two leagues, seor." "Well, 
how far is it to Point Ao Nuevo?" "Oh, seor, it must be a very long way! I 
think it is in the neighborhood of the other world!" I have never yet been 
able to get the remotest approximation to a correct statement of distance 
from a California Indian, those who were reared and educated by the old 
padres at the Spanish missions being as utterly ignorant on the subject as 
the diggers of the mountains, who never knew or cared to know anything 
beyond the condition of the grasshoppers on 

Page 43

which they fatten in the summer season, and the acorn and pion crops on 
which they subsist during the winter. 

After a ride of thirty miles from Crystal Springs, done at a gallop, up 
hill and down, nearly all the way,' and in just four hours and ten 
minutes, I reached the little town of Pescadero, in a small but fertile 
valley some two miles from the ocean, a popular summer resort for San 
Franciscans, and a favorite head-quarters of the hunters and fishermen of 
the coast. The long ride had given me a savage appetite, and as the fog 
had drifted in from the ocean, and shut down cold and damp on the 
landscape, a broiled trout dinner and a warm wood-fire never seemed more 
welcome than they did that evening at Pescadero. 

The population of Pescadero does not exceed three hundred souls, who 
depend on the lumber-mills in the great redwood forest, the dairies, the 
grain and potato ranches, and summer visitors from San Francisco, for life 
and trade. The heavy fogs, and cold, raw ocean winds are unfavorable to 
grapes and other fruits, but potatoes thrive wonderfully, and are 
extensively cultivated on the rich bottom lands around the town. Half the 
"ground fruit" consumed in San Francisco comes from this section of the 
coast. An old ranchero told me that for ten years the average price of 
potatoes had been one dollar and twenty-five cents per hundred pounds, and 
the usual yield from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five bags, at 
one hundred and twenty-five Pounds each, per acre. The digging 

Page 44

is done by native Californians, or "greasers." Land, in the great ranches 
back on the road to Spanish Town, is worth from forty to fifty dollars per 
acre, but the potato lands, near this town, are worth one hundred dollars, 
or even more. A few old California Indians work in the fields quite 
faithfully after their fashion, but none of the old hands equal the 
Chinaman "year out and year in." Much lumber is hauled from the mountains, 
and, with potatoes, grain and vegetables, is shipped for San Francisco 
from the embarcadero at Pigeon Point, six miles south of Pescadero. 

My stay in Pescadero being limited, mine host of the Swanton House 
volunteered, Californian-like, to take me down the coast to see the 
sights. A six-mile ride over an open, rolling country, devoted chiefly to 
grazing, brought us to Pigeon Point, a famous place for wrecks, and a 
depot of the coast whalers. It gets its name from the wreck of the Carrier 
Pigeon, a noble clipper-ship which drifted in here one night in the winter 
of 1853-4, and was shattered To pieces upon the terrible reefs running out 
from the foot of the bold promontory. Here, on the high headland, are 
clustered some dozen cottages, inhabited by the coast whalers and their 
families. These men are all "Gees"--Portuguese--from the Azores or Western 
Islands. They are a stout, hardy-looking race, grossly ignorant, dirty, 
and superstitious. They work hard, and are doing well in business. As we 
rode up, two long, sharp, single-masted boats, with odd-looking sails, 
shot out to sea. On the Point, by the side of flag-staffs, on 

[image caption: PIGEON POINT]

Page 45

which signals were to be hoisted to guide the boats in their pursuit, 
crouched two of the party with their sea glasses, intently watching the 
boats and sweeping the horizon. 

Are there any whales about? Oh, yes, plenty! and the speaker handed us his 
glass. About three miles out was a large school of the black, hump hack 
species sporting in the nearly smooth sea, rising to the surface to blow, 
showing their black hacks, and going down again among the sardines on 
which they were feeding. The boats run out with sails set, and do not take 
in their canvas until a whale is harpooned. If a new school is discovered, 
the boats are signaled by the party on the Point. Looking through the 
glass we saw the boats running for different whales. All was bustle and 
excitement on board, the harpooners standing in the bows ready to strike, 
and every man at his post. One of the signal men could speak a little 
English, and thus soliloquized for our benefit: "E blow, e blow! One close 
herd starboard boat! Carraho, now he run! Ze son of seacook, how he run; 
dam a he! Believe myself he get away!" Then, carried away by his feelings, 
he proceeded to curse in good Portuguese, honestly and squarely, for 
fifteen minutes, and I felt my respect for him rising almost to the point 
of admiration. 

Tired of watching, we at last started off to see what else there was of 
interest at the station, When we returned, near Evening, the boats were 
far down on the edge of the horizon, and had apparently fastened to a 
whale, while another large 

Page 46

school was playing undisturbed within half. a mile of the shore. The 
trypots were placed on the other side of the Point, and there we found a 
party of men busy extracting the oil from heaps of blubber ready cut up 
from a huge humpback whale; flukes and wreck lay on the beach below. They 
were dripping and fairly saturated with the oil, and everything around was 
in the same Condition. The stinking fluid had run down the face of the 
bluff to the water's edge, and the whole place was redolent of the 
perfume. A row of casks filled with oil testified to the success of the 
business. The tryers told us that they had cut up twelve whales already 
that season, and had killed and lost ten more. The fall season usually 
begins in October, but that year the whales had come down from the Arctic 
regions a month or six weeks earlier, and business had opened good. est 
year they caught only two humpbacks, the rest being "California grays." 
This year, thus far, the whales killed had all been humpbacks. A good big 
fellow will yield one hundred barrels of oil, but the average is perhaps 
thirty-five. Whale-fishing is carried on in this manner at San Luis 
Obispo, Monterey, and other points all along the coast down to Cape St. 
Lucas. On the hill I noticed a pile of the blubber scraps from which the 
oil had been boiled, which are used for lighting fires to guide the boats 
hoe on dark nights Did it ever by any possibility occur to these guileless 
Gees, that' a fire thus lighted at this high point on a dark night might 
possibly be mistaken for a lighthouse light, and thus a noble vessel, 
freighted 

[image caption: TRYING OUT.]

Page 47

with precious lives, and freight liable to get badly scattered when cast 
ashore by the waves, be lured to destruction? There have been many wrecks 
along this rocky coast, and underwriters seldom secure much of the cargo 

There are no real harbors between San Francisco and San Diego, about four 
hundred miles south, and very few places where a vessel can in the fairest 
weather run alongside a wharf to load or unload. At Pigeon Point there is 
a semicircular bay, partially sheltered from the northern winds, but the 
heavy swells rolling in from the southwest prevent any wharves being 
erected. Out about two hundred yards from the shore is a high monument-
like rock, rising to a level with the steep rock bluff which half incloses 
the bay. From the bluff to the top of this rock stretches a heavy wire 
cable, kept taut by a capstan. A vessel rounding the reef runs into the 
sheltered cove under this hawser, and then casts anchor. Slings running 
down on the hawser are rigged, and her cargo lifted from her deck load by 
load, run up into the air fifty to one hundred feet, then hauled in shore, 
and landed upon the top of the bluff. Lumber, hay in bales like cotton, 
fruit, potatoes, vegetables, dairy products, etc., etc., are in like 
manner run out and lowered at the right moment upon the vessel's decks. If 
a southwester comes on she slips her anchor and runs out to sea till it is 
over. This system is in extensive use along the coast, though in some 
places lighters and tugs are employed to load and unload. 

This part of the coast has a terrible name, and 

Page 48

may well be dreaded by sailors. Six miles south of Pigeon Point is Point 
Ao Nuevo (New Year). The shore between bends inward, and all along black 
reefs of rocks rear their ugly fangs, like wild beasts watching for their 
prey. A current sweeps in from Point Ao Nuevo toward Pigeon Point, and 
many a vessel has been drawn in in the fog, to be dashed on the rocks. Off 
Point Ao Nuevo is a desert island of three or four acres of sand and 
rocks, a favorite resort of sea-lions and sea-birds. On this island the 
United States government proposed to erect a lighthouse, but the owners of 
the great Spanish ranch of seventeen thousand acres, to whom it belongs, 
asked forty thousand dollars for a deed of it,--they bought the whole 
grant originally for about twenty thousand dollars, and have realized 
twice that sum from partial sales; and so it was decided to place it on 
Pigeon Point, where a site equally as good was secured for five thousand 
dollars. Ultimately the demand for a site at Point Ao Nuevo, at something 
like a reasonable rate, was conceded, and there will soon be a lighthouse 
on both points. 

The most noted wrecks hereabouts have been as follows: 1. The clipper-ship 
Carrier Pigeon, of eleven hundred tons, from Boston, wrecked at Pigeon 
Point in, the winter of 1853-4, the vessel and cargo being a total loss, 
although the crew escaped. 2. The ship Sir John Franklin, from Baltimore, 
with the cargo of the Pennell, condemned at Rio de Janeiro; lost at Point 
Ao Nuevo, six years ago; captain, first mate, and eleven of the crew 
drowned. 3. The 

Page 49

British iron bark Coya, from Newcastle, with coal and passengers; wrecked 
between the two points, four years ago. No danger was suspected in this 
case, until in the early part of the night the vessel, supposed to be 
forty miles off shore, was discovered to be among the breakers. Before she 
could be put about she struck the reef, rolled over into the deep water 
beyond, and went down in an instant, carrying with her twenty-seven 
people, including three women. Two men and a boy, half naked, benumbed and 
exhausted, were cast upon the rocks, and reached a ranch, the only 
survivors of the thirty souls on board. 4. The ship Hellespont (British), 
from Newcastle, eleven hundred tons of coal, lost near Pigeon Point one 
night in the winter of 1869-70. Seven men perished, but a portion of the 
crew, naked, bleeding, bruised, and more dead than alive, succeeded in 
reaching the fishermen's station. 

On the sandy bluff at Point Ao Nuevo is an inclosure within which lie 
buried, side by side, forty of the victims of these terrible disasters. 
Others were removed by their friends, and one, the mate of the Hellespont, 
sleeps, undisturbed by the merry prattle of the children or the wild 
screams of the sea-gulls, beside one of the whalers' houses at Pigeon 
Point. 

"You see that grave right behind that house?" said my companion. "That is 
where we buried the mate of the Hellespont. She went ashore in the night 
within a mile of the Point, and, owing to the roar of the breakers, the 
whalemen knew nothing about it. One of the sailors, bleeding from many 
wounds, more dead than alive, and wholly naked, 

Page 50

every rag having been torn from him in his buffeting with the waves, 
managed to crawl up the bluff, and, groping in the darkness, stumbled upon 
the trail leading to the Point. Just as the day was breaking, he had crept 
within sight of the cottages. One of the whalemen coming out met the poor 
fellow at the door, and raising the cry, 'A ghost! a ghost!' ran back with 
such speed as his trembling limbs would give him. The supposed ghost, 
seeing a chance for life, and being too cold to speak, staggered after 
him. In his terror the Portuguese stumbled and fell headlong upon the 
floor, and the shipwrecked mariner stumbled also and fell upon him. The 
other Gees, hearing the outcry, ran to the spot. and fell over the 
prostrate couple, and the horrible and grotesque were strangely mixed. At 
last the ghost related his story, and the frightened fishermen started 
down in search of the other survivors, two or three of whom were met 
crawling along the road. The bodies of others were lying on the beach, or 
tossed to and fro by the breakers, while the fragments of the wreck 
strewed the shore for miles. There is a telegraph station on the Point, 
communicating with the Merchants' Exchange in San Francisco and with the 
station at Pescadero. and the news of the disaster was soon known along 
the coast. We placed the body of the mate into a coffin, and asked the 
Portuguese to help us to bring it to the Point for burial, but the 
superstitious fellows would not touch the corpse for love or money. I 
coaxed, and pleaded, and appealed to their humanity, but all in vain. Then 
I swore that I would get even 

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on them. We went up there and commenced digging a grave. When they saw 
what we were doing, they began to comprehend the Situation, and so far 
conquered their prejudices as to offer to help us carry the corpse up the 
hill. 'Not much, darlings of my heart; I have change my mind!' I said; and 
I had. I meant to give them a lesson which would last them a lifetime, or 
make them move their quarters. So three of us lugged it to this spot, and 
buried it beside the cottage, and his ghost has annoyed them every stormy 
night since, and will probably worry them as long as they stay here." 

Thus chatting, we rode on down the coast, and when abreast of Point Ao 
Nuevo, drove up to the door of the hospitable proprietor of Steele's 
Dairy.