iful
red sandstone, uninhabited and barren, becalmed there in the changing
blue of sky and sea, like enormous mastless galleons, like degraded
icebergs, like Capri and Ischia. They say that they are stationary. I
only know that when I walk along the shore towards Point Loma they seem
to follow, until they lie opposite the harbor entrance, which is close
by the promontory; and that when I return, they recede and go away
towards Mexico, to which they belong. Sometimes, as seen from the beach,
owing to the difference in the humidity of the strata of air over the
ocean, they seem smaller at the bottom than at the top. Occasionally
they come quite near, as do the sea-lions and the gulls, and again they
almost fade out of the horizon in a violet light. This morning they
stand away, and the fleet of white-sailed fishing-boats from the
Portuguese hamlet of La Playa, within the harbor entrance, which is
dancing off Point Loma, will have a long sail if they pursue the
barracuda to those shadowy rocks.

[Illustration: IN THE GARDEN AT SANTA BARBARA MISSION.]

We crossed the bay the other day, and drove up a wild road to the height
of the promontory, and along its narrow ridge to the light-house. This
site commands one of the most remarkable views in the accessible
civilized world, one of the three or four really great prospects which
the traveller can recall, astonishing in its immensity, interesting in
its peculiar details. The general features are the great ocean, blue,
flecked with sparkling, breaking wavelets, and the wide, curving
coast-line, rising into mesas, foot-hills, ranges on ranges of
mountains, the faintly seen snow-peaks of San Bernardino and San Jacinto
to the Cuyamaca and the flat top of Table Mountain in Mexico. Directly
under us on one side are the fields of kelp, where the whales come to
feed in winter; and on the other is a point of sand on Coronado Beach,
where a flock of pelicans have assembled after their day's fishing, in
which occupation they are the rivals of the Portuguese. The perfect
crescent of the ocean beach is seen, the singular formation of North and
South Coronado Beach, the entrance to the harbor along Point Loma, and
the spacious inner bay, on which lie San Diego and National City, with
lowlands and heights outside sprinkled with houses, gardens, orchards,
and vineyards. The near hills about this harbor are varied in form and
poetic in color, one of them, the conical San Miguel, constantly
r