place has inhabitants; and the splash, panic, and roar which follow tell him that the occupants are sea-lions. Quickly he must needs speed out, for they will plunge straight toward him, dive under him, and he must be wary, else they will upset his boat, and once he is in the water they will attack him, with possibly fatal results.

Sea-lious are abundant about all of the islands. At Anacapa there is an enormous kelp-bed, where they breed and have their metropolis. These carnivora are not fur - bearing, but are covered with hair which grows upon a thick, unelastic hide. The hide has few uses, and the flesh is not palatable, though Indians find many services for the former, and the latter has furnished innumerable meals to both whites and natives. About Anacapa, too, there is a variety of shell-fish, the most notable of which is the haliotis, or abalone. It is a univalve, which seizes hold of a rock with its strong, muscular foot, and floats idly upward upon the surface, its broad scooped shell shield ing its body like a dark umbrella. When disturbed it will suddenly contract, collapse, and its shell will be drawn over the body tightly against the rock. These abalone are much sought, and their fisheries sustain a numerous population of Italians and Chinese. The shell is iridescent, the nacre being variegated blue and green or pink and white; they are

ONE DAY'S CATCH.

Jew-fish, a shark and small fry.

exported to London, where they are worked up into mother-of-pearl of commerce, and so employed in the manufacture of buttons and ornaments. The flesh of the animal is dried, and becomes a hard, soapcolored ball as large as a woman's fist. It is sent to China, where it is used as food. The shells bring $30 per ton, while $90 is paid for a like quantity of the desiccated meat.

Upon San Nicolas, the farthest seaward of the islands, lying about sixty miles off shore, there are innumerable remnants of an aboriginal population. Evidences appear upon all the islands of their having been the abode of a race of people who have passed; but at San Nicolas appear all the specimens that are found elsewhere, and many that have not been duplicated by any other spot. Immense mounds of abalone shells, some half an acre in extent, are among these curiosities, revealing the sites of periodic feasts of the islanders upon this fish. Among these piles are scattered the shells of the limpet, mya, mussel, and other mollusks, while stone mortars and pestles, implements of bone and ornaments of teeth, are both numerous and curious.

On a knoll two miles from the island beach is an Indian burial ground. A dozen or more grim skeletons with their whitened skulls lie upon the shore, denuded of the sand in which they were once interred.

The wild winds have

swept it away, and the rains and fogs and the bleaching suns have been striving to dissolve and eradicate them, but they still remain. Some of the skulls show evidences of the tragic manner in which their owners met their deaths. The Innuits, it is said, coming down from the Alaskan archipelagoes, fell upon these harmless children of the south, massacred the men, and after a little while abandoned the women and the young, and carried off all they could steal. This was long after 1542, when Ca

brillo, the Spanish navigator, visited the islands, and found them tenanted by a mild and vigorous people, who, revelling in the soft ether of their climate, found their sustenance in the plenitudinous spontaneity of nature.

After the invasion of the Innuits and their departure, those who remained managed to maintain themselves until 1835. when the Franciscan friars went to the islands, and gathering them all into boats, took them to the mainland, where they were mingled with the neophytes of the missions. It is related that after the last boat had pushed off from San Nicolas a woman screamed for her child, which, in the excitement of the movement aboard the transports, she had forgotten. She jumped out of the vessel and sped away to seek it. The boat continued its passage, and the woman was left to her fate. The baby died, but the lone and miserable creature remained the solitary inhabitant of the place for many years. In her old age she was rescued and brought to Santa Barbara, where she died soon after her arrival.

Of all the several islands the Faral

lones are the most remarkable, for the fact that they comprise the rookeries of vast numbers of sea-fowl, which assemble there and breed. These lie opposite the bay of San Francisco, and they are used by the government for a light-house station. The maintenance of this requires the residence upon the island of a small colony of persons who in the service of the government consent thus to banish themselves from society. The light-house steamer visits them every three months, then restocks their larder. Aside from this their only communication with civilization is by an occasional tug which may stop there to allow its captain to spy abroad from the light-house tower for incoming craft. Sometimes such a landing is not possible, owing to the height of the sea, and weeks may pass before the waters will subside so such can be effected.

At nearly all times a strong cool wind prevails, and often in the afternoon it is sifted through with fog. A high board fence has been erected to protect the vegetation in the tiny patch of the light-housetender's garden from being uprooted by

the wind. But even with that, plant life does not thrive-or rather it thrives excessively, so that foliage becomes rank, and the fruit is a failure through growing too fast. Cabbages spring up, rush quickly into an abundance of green heavy leaves, but will not head. Onions, and potatoes become immense in stalk and foliage, but will not "bulb" or "tuber." The cause of this is the strong guano soil in which the plants are grown; and the guano is deposited by the wild sea-fowl, which infest all the Farallones, three in number, making of them, in the opinion of ornithologists, the greatest bird islands in the world.

There are eight varieties of these birds. They are the guillemot, commonly called the murre, the gull, the auk or auklet, the sea-pigeon, the shag or cormorant, the ashy petrel, the tufted puffin or seaparrot, and the rock-wren. The first of these, the .murre, dominates in number and importance upon the island. It is a kind of duck, with a black head, white breast, and bluish back, and sits upright like a penguin. Its food is vegetable, dissection never having revealed the presence of fish. Its eggs are valuable for

food, and until recently and for many years they were extensively gathered and sold in the San Francisco market, about fifteen thousand dozen yearly being dis posed of there, purchased mainly by restaurants and boarding-houses, at an average price of twenty-five cents per dozen. The egg is about twice the size of that of a hen, is white or bluish-green, and flecked with brown. When fresh it is indistin guishable from the hen product, but it soon develops a fishy taste. The murre lays one egg upon a nest of roots or grass, and proceeds to incubate the next generation. At night, when she is off duty, the male succeeds her. If unmo lested, the nest will thus be covered until the young is hatched, when it will be guarded for a few weeks, then escorted off into the indefinite distance of the sea.

But if the murre is disturbed by an egghunter and its single egg taken, it will return and replace its successively stolen ovum until eight have been laid. It is loath to leave its nest even when the despoiler approaches, and when he comes up she leans away from him and moves over to the far side of the nest. But presently, yielding to the alarm within her

AN EGG-PICKER'S CABIN.

vor.

cormorant egg will not coagulate, and the puffin's egg has a repulsive fishy flaThis bird has black plumage, with red beak and feet, while the cormorant is a large light blue bird, and flies in pairs. The sea-pigeon is dark slate with some white in its wings; it has red feet, and lays a light blue egg. The auk is as large as a pigeon, and is nocturnal in its habits. The petrel has a musky smell, by the odor of which its nest is easily traceable.

The murres make their nests high up, and often in the open, but the others hide theirs in the crevices of the rocks. Their note is loud, shrill, not pleasing to the ear; all except the cheery little rock-wren, whose liquid warble is a sweet, harmonious solo in the concert of shrieks and screams which ascend from the thousands of feathered throats.

That these islands were a great repository of edible eggs became known in the early fifties. At the time of the discovery of this fact provisions were scarce and gold was plentiful in San Francisco, and the rookery eggs offered in the markets of that city brought one dollar a dozen. The opening of this new and free opportunity to acquire wealth precipitated numbers of people upon the islands and in the business of egg-gathering. Quarrels ensued

between the competitors as to their respective "rights" in the premises, with the result that a company was formed among a number of the pickers, which bought out the claims of the others. This company managed to hold on to its advantages for some years, not, however, without experiencing contests and encroachments, until the bickerings ultimately grew so fierce as to attract the attention of the United States district attorney at San Francisco. He sent a detachment of government soldiers there and deported every egg-picker.

Following this the murres and gulls were permitted for a season to lay and hatch in safety; but later, the government revealing no desire for revenue from the eggs, those on the island allowed them to be picked on shares. This introduced a company of about eighteen Greek and Italian egg-pickers into the nidus - robbing enterprise; but disputes soon again arose, and ultimately to re-establish peace upon the islands it became necessary to forbid permanently any traffic in the eggs. This has accordingly been done by a recent order from Washington.