British iron bark Coya, from Newcastle, with coal and passengers; wrecked between the two points, four years ago. No danger was suspected in this case, until in the early part of the night the vessel, supposed to be forty miles off shore, was discovered to be among the breakers. Before she could be put about she struck the reef, rolled over into the deep water beyond, and went down in an instant, carrying with her twenty-seven people, including three women. Two men and a boy, half naked, benumbed and exhausted, were cast upon the rocks, and reached a ranch, the only survivors of the thirty souls on board. 4. The ship Hellespont (British), from Newcastle, eleven hundred tons of coal, lost near Pigeon Point one night in the winter of 1869-70. Seven men perished, but a portion of the crew, naked, bleeding, bruised, and more dead than alive, succeeded in reaching the fishermen's station.
On the sandy bluff at Point Año Nuevo is an inclosure within which lie buried, side by side, forty of the victims of these terrible disasters. Others were removed by their friends, and one, the mate of the Hellespont, sleeps, undisturbed by the merry prattle of the children or the wild screams of the sea-gulls, beside one of the whalers' houses at Pigeon Point.
"You see that grave right behind that house?" said my companion. "That is where we buried the mate of the Hellespont. She went ashore in the night within a mile of the Point, and, owing to the roar of the breakers, the whalemen knew nothing about it. One of the sailors, bleeding from many wounds, more dead than alive, and wholly naked,
