ea of
a low island, and after there waiting the subsi- dence of the wind for over six hours was obliged to steam up again as the vessel dragged her anchor badly.
And as the day wearily wasted itself and another night came on with some abatement of the storm, the lowering sky still rested on the unquiet ocean. Once more nothing can be seen ; you hear the rioting winds, the din and roar of raging waters; you feel the darkness and the trembling^ of the frig-htened ship as lashed by breakers and struck by solid surges it rises and falls to the rolling of the waves ; and every sinking is as the sinking into the grave, every booming wave that strikes upon the deck is like fall- ing clods upon the coffin.
Next morning our Pacific was all over her passion, though her bosom yet hea'v^ed somewhat, and the sun came out and smiled upon the sea and changed the black hills off our larboard bow into hazy purple. From the ocean the Coast Range looks like a com- pact rugged barren seawall, forest -tufted at the top and seamed and furrowed with innumerable ravines. Yet though seemingly so near, between these moun- tains and the sea is a belt of fertile land, from one to twenty miles in width, which is the garden spot, the Italy, it is sometimes called, of California. It was along this enchanting shore, between the bays of San Diego and San Francisco, that the Franciscan fathers planted their line of missions, which achievement and their subsequent doings, may be classed among the wonders of the world. At this time were seen herds of cattle and horses running over hills brown and dry in summer but now enrobed in emerald, and here and there the bell-towers of a mission church appeared rising from the shelf of a ravine.
With Santa Barbara islands and Point Concepcion behind us, at half-past five in the afternoon of the 30th we met the steamer Ohio bound down. Ag-ain we are obliged to seek fuel, this time at Monterey,
