CHAPTER V.
SANTA CRUZ AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
The Bay of Santa Cruz and its Surroundings.—The Natural Bridge.—Mussel Men, their Dangers and Delights.—Adventure with a Sea-Lion.—Un-invited Guest at a Picnic.—An Embarcadero.Sea-Bathing.—Big Trees of Santa Cruz.—Caves.—Mountain Rides.—Supposed Ruins.—Up the Valley of the San Lorenzo.—The Mountain Honeysuckle and Madrono.—Over the Mountains Again.—The Redwood.—And what a Fall was there, my Countrymen!—How they Broke Jail.—Down the Valley of Los Gatos.—Strange Rise and Fall of the Streams of the Coast Range.—Out of the Wilderness.—An Old Friend's Story.
From the bold rocky shore of the Bay of Monterey to the westward of Santa Cruz, I looked upon a scene of quiet beauty worthy the pencil of the ablest painter, that warm sunny autumn afternoon. The bay itself was calm and unruffled by breeze or gale, but ever and anon a huge ground-swell roller came stealing silently in, as if to catch somebody by surprise, and, failing in that, burst with a long sullen roar upon the jagged limestone cliffs which form a barrier to the encroachments of the ocean on that side. Beyond the broad bay, on the line of the southern horizon, rose the gray-, and purple-, and mauve-tinted mountains, which come down almost to the water's edge, and at the foot of which stands the old, historic, picturesque, and half-decayed Spanish city of Monterey, the ancient capital of Alta Cali-
