and jutted by rocky point, showed creeping
white lines of foam, and then green water spotted by beds of golden
kelp, reaching out into the deeps. Far across the lonely space rose
creamy clouds, thunderheads looming over the desert on the mainland.

A big black raven soared by with dismal croak. The wind rustled the
oats. There was no other sound but the sound of the sea--deep,
low-toned, booming like thunder, long crash and continuous roar.

How wonderful to watch eagles in their native haunts! I saw a bald eagle
sail by, and then two golden eagles winging heavy flight after him.
There seemed to be contention or rivalry, for when the white-headed bird
alighted the others swooped down upon him. They circled and flew in and
out of the canon, and one let out a shrill, piercing scream. They
disappeared and I watched a lonely gull riding the swells. He at least
was at home on the restless waters. Life is beautiful, particularly
elemental life. Then far above I saw the white-tipped eagle and I
thrilled to see the difference now in his flight. He was monarch of the
air, king of the wind, lonely and grand in the blue. He soared, he
floated, he sailed, and then, away across the skies he flew, swift as an
arrow, to slow and circle again, and swoop up high and higher,
wide-winged and free, ringed in the azure blue, and then like a
thunderbolt he fell, to vanish beyond the crags.

Again I saw right before me a small brown hawk, poised motionless,
resting on the wind, with quivering wings, and he hung there, looking
down for his prey--some luckless lizard or rat. He seemed suspended on
wires. There, down like a brown flash he was gone, and surely that swoop
meant a desert tragedy.

I heard the bleat of a lamb or kid, and it pierced the melancholy roar
of the sea.

If there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there was indeed rapture here
high above it, blown upon by the sweet, soft winds. I heard the bleat
close at hand. Turning, I saw a she-goat with little kid scarce a foot
high. She crossed a patch of cactus. The kid essayed to follow here, but
found the way too thorny. He bleated--a tiny, pin-pointed bleat--and his
mother turned to answer encouragingly. He leaped over a cactus,
attempted another, and, failing, fell on the sharp prickers. He bleated
in distress and scrambled out of that hard and painful place. The mother
came around, and presently, reunited, they went on, to disappear.

The island seemed consecrated to sun a