62 THE CONDOR VoL. VI on their way up the northwest coast named the islands "Los Farallones de los Frayles" in honor of the monks who had discovered San Francisco Bay in i769, the same year that the Franciscans founded their first mission in Alta California, at San Diego. The first settlers on the islands, we know, were Russians from the north who came with Aleuts to fish and seal hunt. There remain today, on the southeastern part of the island, the well-preserved stone walls of their low huts, but the date of their occupancy is unknown. The islands are formed of crystalline granite, a ridge rising many hundred feet above the ocean floor. Sugar Loaf Rock in Fisherman's Bay is an exception being a conglomerate of coarse gravel standing isolated r85 teet above sea-level. South Fatallone Island is the largest of the group. At water line the rocks are of a blackish brown where the surf beats, and then above high water mark change to a yellow or light grayish tone over all the island, where not occupied by the roosting or nesting areas of the sea-fowl, or changed by the presence of introduced plants. The granite readily yields to a pick, and offers a firm footing, but is rather hard on shoe-leather. Shore lines are all cut up into great channel-like troughs, WEST END ACROSS BREAKER BAY with arched grottos running far into tile rock and filled with gorgeously tinted marine life. There are natural bridges, pot holes, and shelving ledges of all des- criptions. I will go into a general description of the island life only so far as it may tend to show the changes which have occurred in the colony life of the leathered occu- pants as noted in my former visits to the island in x885-87, and in I9o3. Naturally many changes would occur when so many thousands of sea-fowl have been more or less disturbed during the nesting season for the past fifty years. In ?85o the Farallone Egg Colnpany was organized to collect and ship the eggs of the Califor- nia murre (gfria 1. californica) for the San Francisco market, and by x856 it was estimated that three or four millions of eggs had been shipped." Twenty-five thousand dozen a year were then said to have been taken up to I873 .b This fig- ure then decreased to. about t5.ooo dozen, which was not far from the amount a Hotching's Magazine, Aug. i856 , p. 53- b Harpe's Monthly, April, x874 , p. 623.
