208 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



"The Coast Pilot" says: "Navigators should exercise 

 great caution when in this vicinity." Navigators 

 will doubtless give it a wide berth. The latitude is 

 32° 25' north; longitude 119° 07' west. 



The oceanic rivers here and about the east end of 

 San Clemente are extraordinarily fickle. I have seen 

 the current stop suddenly when it had been running 

 two mUes an hour, and soon begin to run in the oppo- 

 site direction; and fishermen tell strange tales of the 

 currents of the Banks of Tanner and Cortez where old 

 bells are said to toll on stormy nights, and weird craft 

 are seen sailing across the shallows. Now and then 

 some one describes the walls and towers of a city 

 some one has seen on Cortez. They trace battlements 

 and bastions, as Lowell traces canals on Mars, but no 

 one else can see them. Yet there is a fascination in 

 dreaming dreams awake of some ancient city that 

 once stood here, and that in a single big throe of the 

 earth was wiped out of existence and is now the abode 

 of fishes and smothered in the forests of winding kelp. 

 There are many phenomena of the sea that seem mys- 

 terious and unaccountable in the absence of knowledge. 



Some years ago I was coming in from San Nicolas 

 Island in the large yacht of a friend. It was a dead 

 calm when we made Santa Barbara Island, and the 

 sea was as smooth as glass. Suddenly we ran into a 

 ground swell — quite the most extraordinary exhibi- 

 tion I had ever seen in blue water, and I have been at 

 sea in all kinds of weather, from a West Indian hurri- 

 cane to a "herd" of water spouts. 



We ran into it without warning, and as the big rollers 

 cam^e up astern they looked like mountains, and the 

 impact was almost sufi5cient to have jerked the masts 



