CHAPTER XXVIII 



JUANA BETTER THAN NOTHING — THE LOST WOMAN 

 OF SAN NICOLAS 



MY first visit to Santa Catalina was made, I 

 think, in the hope of discovering a temple 

 to the god Chinigchinich of the ancient 

 Pimugnans, described by Torquemada, the padre of the 

 Vizcaino expedition in 1602, but I hunted the deep 

 canons and the Vale of Avalon in vain. My first visit 

 to San Nicolas was inspired by reading old Captain 

 Nidever's account of the "lost woman" who, having 

 been deserted, lived there alone for twenty years. 

 She died back in the fifties; but Nidever's account of 

 her hut and her life illumined the wind-swept island 

 with a gleam of romance and pathos, to me at least, 

 and I made three trips in all to it. But the winds, 

 the human devastators — the curio-hunters, the otter- 

 exterminators, and others, — and mostly the flying 

 sand, had doubtless long ago wiped out the evidences 

 of her occupation. 



In the museum of the Vatican is exhibited, or was, 

 a few years ago, a singular suit of pelican and gull 

 skins about which a tale, true and affecting, has been 

 woven. It was sent to Rome by one of the Mission 

 Fathers on the Pacific Coast as being related to the 

 attempts to Christianize the natives of that coast. 

 According to Nidever, one of the old and respected sea 

 captains of Santa Barbara, the Mexican Government 



313 



