186 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



covered with brown pelicans; and as our gun sounded 

 a not very heavy awakener, they started up in vast 

 numbers, and in great wheeUng coils rose upward into 

 the sky. 



Anacapa is doubtless an island in the last stages, 

 fighting for its life, though it may never have been 

 much larger; and it is interesting to land and note the 

 ravages of the sea. It is the most easterly of the Santa 

 Barbara group and is not over eleven miles from the 

 mainland or Hueneme Light, at the nearest point. 

 To all intents and purposes it is one island, Anacapa, 

 but when you land or cruise about it, near inshore, it 

 mysteriously divides itself up into three or more 

 islands; doubtless the divisions have been eaten in 

 by the gnawing tooth of the sea. The island forming 

 the east end is the lowest; about a mile long and a 

 fourth of a mile wide, with an altitude of about two 

 hundred feet. This is really divided into two islands, 

 the arch referred to forming one. 



The middle island or link in the Anacapan chain is 

 nearly three hundred and twenty feet high, one and 

 three-quarters of a mile long, one-fourth of a mile 

 wide. The largest island lies to the west. Its peak, 

 nine hundred and eighty feet high, can be seen thirty- 

 five miles offshore when the day is clear and hot. The 

 others can be sighted from fifteen to twenty miles 

 away, and are so flat or peculiar that they appear like 

 strange exhibitions of the mirage. The little chan- 

 nels which divide the island are tempestuous places in 

 storms when the sea rushes through and climbs the 

 shores, flinging the spoondrift and flying scud far into 

 the interior and starring the beetled cliffs with incrus- 

 tations of salt. 



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