A La California/Chapter 2
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 Cañada 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 Anño 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, fill 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 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 are 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 madroño, whose crown of bright-green leaves contrasts so pleasingly with its bark of brilliant scarlet—the madroño 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 cañons, 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 sines 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 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 in 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 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, señor; 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, señor, 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.
"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 ioams 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,
The eggs of that sweet bird change their hue,
And burn with red, 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 cafion, 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 paseár, but, if possible, even more entrancingly beautiful. Eastward, the Bay of San Francisco, cairn, unruffled, and blue, glittered in the 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 Cañada 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 cañons, nestle quiet farm-houses, and 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 grain-fields, 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 his low-roofed jaical, and the musical Spanish name which he gave to the valley.
On again. One of those curious bue-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 canon 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 cañons 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, the narrow canon, near the mouth of which, half hidden in 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 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, señor"—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 hill-tops 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, 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 passes through one continued grain-field. 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 here term the steam thrashing machine, most of it still lies in the fields unfathered. 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 afraid 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 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 will 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 cañons. 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 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, and 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, señor." "Well, how far is it to Point Año Nuevo?" "Oh, señor, 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 which they fatten in the summer season, and the acorn and piñon 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 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 Pescaderco.
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 
PIGEON POINT
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 back species sporting in the nearly smooth sea, rising to the surface to blow, showing their black backs, 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 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. Last 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 home 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 
TRYING OUT.
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 may well be dreaded by sailors. Six miles south of Pigeon Point is Point Año 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 Año Nuevo toward Pigeon Point, and many a vessel has been drawn in in the fog, to be dashed on the rocks. Off Point Año 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 Año 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 Año Nuevo, six years ago; captain, first mate, and eleven of the crew drowned. 3. The 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 Año 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, 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 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 changed 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 Año Nuevo, drove up to the door of the hospitable proprietor of Steele's Dairy.