Late Noon in the West 257 



unique annual phenomenon that took place up and down the Cali- 

 fornia coast. 



No two coasts in the world are identical, but there are many that 

 can be closely approximated in various widely separated parts of this 

 planet; I have in mind those of Maine and western Scotland, of Chile 

 and Norway, and of countless palm-girt tropical beaches. There are 

 others, however, that are absolutely unique, so that if one were 

 dropped upon them blindfolded from a spaceship, one would recog- 

 nize them by smell or sound alone, provided one had been upon 

 them at least once before. Such is the coast of California. There is a 

 quality about its light that, although quite indefinable, is not found 

 elsewhere; the sound of its endless and enormous oily rollers tipping 

 on to its narrow beaches is quite distinct from that made by any 

 other swell on any other coast. And it looks different. Nowhere else 

 can the sea be such a pale blue under a brilliant sun, and nowhere else 

 are such vast beds of kelp seaweed found moving lugubriously up 

 and down just below the surface oifshore. These kelp beds extend in- 

 termittently all down the west coast of the North American con- 

 tinent and provide a most distinctive habitat for a very particular 

 fauna which once included great numbers of primitive beasts known 

 to science as Rachianectes, to a limited number of the public as the 

 Gray Whale, and to the whalers of old as the Devil Fish. These ani- 

 mals once migrated up and down this coast in huge congregations, 

 feeding among the kelp beds and scratching their itching skins on the 

 rocks of its beaches. The scientific name, in fact, means literally the 

 "gray rocky-shore swimmer." 



The gray whale is the most primitive of existing baleen whales. It 

 reaches a length of forty-five feet, and the head is very small com- 

 pared to the body. The baleen plates are small, cream colored, and 

 individually very thick and heavy. In color the whale is a strange 

 mottled or dappled gray of various shades. It has no fin on the back, 

 but a slight hump rises about two thirds of the way aft between nose 

 and tail. Under the throat there are two or four deep, fore-to-aft 

 pleats in the skin. The females are larger than the males, and the 

 young, which are born in late January, are about seventeen feet long. 

 Incidentally, they are weaned in seven months when twenty-five feet 

 long. They have regular rows of hair all over their heads. 



These animals used to live in great numbers in the North Pacific, 



