A PASSING ISLAND 245 



Nicolas, yet I found this island most attractive, from 

 its very desolation. The desert is fascinating if one 

 sees it at the right time, and is not hunting for water, 

 or the right road, and it is not summer. 



San Nicolas is being blown into the sea, and the 

 wind has played some queer pranks here; for example, 

 the mesa of pebbles which leap into the air and blow 

 about, and the wonderful carvings of the wind we 

 found in great natural staircases leading down from 

 the mesa to the beach. On the edge of the mesa there 

 were carvings by the spirits and the wind, that seemed 

 surely of human make, so regular were they. 



Desolate as this spot is, it had at one time a large 

 and vigorous population; on this trip we could not 

 walk one hundred feet without coming across some 

 relic of the ancient people who once lived here. There 

 were pipes, arrow-heads, spears, good-luck stones, 

 beads, and the prototypes of many objects that can 

 be found in any poor family of to-day. 



San Nicolas is extremely interesting from the ethno- 

 logical standpoint, and of all the islands it is the only 

 one regarding the appearance of whose original inhabi- 

 tants any one knows anything definite. A woman was 

 found here years ago, the last of the islanders, and 

 brought to Santa Barbara, as told in a following 

 chapter. As soon as we landed I began to find ves- 

 tiges of these people. On the great sandspit I found 

 graves covered or marked by whale bones, — this 

 seems to have been a favorite method of marking the 

 graves. At the west end there is a mound or kitchen- 

 midden about ten feet high and extending over a mile, 

 made up of shells of various kinds, mostly abalones, 

 thrown here for ages. In this are the graves of count- 



