covered with "horse-mackerel," and the whole population turns out to enjoy the sport of gathering them in. It has never been my good fortune to witness one of these grand fish-battles, but I find one described as follows in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
"We reached the fishing-grounds about twilight,—here the pen fails to do justice to the scene. It was low tide; the sea here forms a continuous, almost level beach, five or six miles long, and an average width of one hundred and fifty yards at low tide, with a hard, smooth bottom, and not a pebble nor a sea-weed visible the whole distance; probably there is no nicer nor finer drive in the State for the same distance: the ever-changeable bluff some one hundred feet in height, all the estuaries filled in with drift-wood, accumulating for years. Now imagine some four hundred people arriving between twilight and dark, the fine carriages, the omnibuses, two-horse teams, four-horse teams, six-horse teams, ox teams, carts and California go-carts, all filled with persons who have the highest expectation of making a big haul. The high piles of dry drift-wood, set ablaze for the distance of five miles, the moon shining with brightest rays on the silver sand and phosphorescent water. Men, women, and children taking their positions at equal distances, awaiting the coming of the fish, which occurs when the tide is on the point of coming in. The theory of the fish coming ashore I imagine is something like this: the bay, at present, is full of a small fish similar to anchovies, the natural food of the mackerel, which, being a very voracious fish, follows the
