290 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



went ashore at Long Beach. In the deep rocks devil 

 fishes are found ten or fifteen feet across, and a giant 

 squid was once discovered so large that it could not 

 be towed in by a power launch. Animal life seems to 

 have reached its maximum in number, size, and abun- 

 dance in these isles of eternal summer. 



In these pellucid waters you will see the big sunfish 

 and the Japanese swordfish {Tetrapturus mitsukurii), 

 leaping, — perhaps to escape the swordsman ; the 

 Xiphias, which attains a weight of six hundred to 

 eighteen hundred pounds; the hugh basking shark; the 

 long-tailed thresher (Alopias), and many more. Along 

 the sandy beaches are the little surf perches, found 

 nowhere else, whose young are born alive. Even the 

 sea horse of these waters is a giant. Occasionally we 

 see the game rooster-fish, so common in the Gulf of 

 California, while the Christmas perch and the banded 

 bass are among the really beautiful and not rare so- 

 journers along the deep forests of the islands. Rare, 

 and but once taken with a rod, is the radiant opah — 

 the most beautiful fish, to my mind, in the world, — 

 the king of the herrings, and so unlike anything about 

 a herring that no one would think of it but the story- 

 teller among the Indians, who believes that the her- 

 rings selected this gorgeous creature with its vestments 

 of silver and old rose as king. Surely it is the king of 

 beauty. I have seen but three in twenty years, and 

 with one, or on the same day, a ghostfish, a fish like a 

 ribbon of silver. I was so fortunate as to keep it 

 alive for hours and secure its picture — the only one, 

 I fancy, ever taken. These are but a few of the won- 

 ders of animal life you may find on the beaches and 

 in the beautiful sea caves and along the kelp beds of 



