172 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



Our camp was a little cul de sac. In front of us was 

 the sea, blue, divine in color, alluring; behind, the deep 

 knife-like gash of a stone canon hammered out by the 

 water gods and nereids, impossible to climb. To get 

 out, one had to climb a steep and uncertain slope of 

 rocks and shining yellow wild-oat hay, as slippery as 

 such a thing can be. Up this one-thousand-foot 

 precipice we started. 



Climbing mountains on a run when the angle is 80° 

 or thereabouts is not my long suit, though I claim 

 to be a protagonist for the athletic and strenuous life 

 principle. Our friend Governor Pardee illustrated my 

 real attitude. He sat on a box in the canon smoking 

 a good cigar, while Senator Flint and I made an effort 

 to keep within a thousand varas of the wild-goat 

 hunters. I think the Senator and I went just to show 

 that we could do it if pushed, while the philosophical 

 Governor knew he could do it, and did not care to 

 prove it at his own expense. 



To make the ascent in comfort, which was really 

 not much of an affair after all for goats and sheep, we 

 followed the sheep trails for the first two hundred feet, 

 going from shelf to shelf, and a third of the way up 

 reached a bench or mesa. Here the actual climb 

 began, in a place where, if a man or a goat made a slip, 

 he would have rolled and slid down over the glass- 

 like wild-oat carpet and landed in the cafion, a thou- 

 sand or so feet below. 



Slowly we crawled up, rising over the splendid 

 expanse of water. Every moment the objects in our 

 little canon grew smaller and smaller as if we were 

 shooting up in a balloon. Now we moved along the 

 slope of a cliff that tipped into our deep rocky canons, 



