THE LOST WOMAN OF SAN NICOLAS S21 



furies of wave and wind and rock and hail, of inky 

 fogs which beat about this island, the incontinent 

 swirling spirits of the clouds — all are beautiful in the 

 sense of Turner's Slave Ship and of the storm described 

 by Ruskin. 



It was low tide, and almost everywhere a black lava 

 platform seemed to reach out into the wild sea, which 

 came piling in with its wild white-maned horses riding 

 on the crest, to be blown away or whisked off into the 

 air. It seemed to me that I had never seen such high 

 waves so near the dry land so beaten back. Brewster 

 of San Buenaventura has made a photograph of this 

 very spot. 



Almost everywhere I found evidences of the people of 

 the Lost Woman or perhaps of herself. I do not think 

 I walked one hundred feet along that cave-infested and 

 wind-gnawed shore without finding some object made 

 by man. Here a toy of some kind, carved in stone; 

 now again a few beads. Here some child had left a 

 "pocket" of limpets, piled one within another, and 

 mortars, pestles, stones, arrow-heads, flint chips, and 

 out upon the sands of the west end tons of great red 

 abalones — the assemblage of centuries — over two or 

 three miles of sand-dunes in which were limpets, crabs, 

 crayfish, shells, bones of animals, and shells of snails. 



In some of the wrecked canons the wind and sand 

 had worked marvels, cutting out exquisite traceries, 

 lattices, serrations, open work; while on the sides were 

 wonderful heads of strange beasts carved by the wind. 

 Rising out of one of these weird canons where nature 

 had played havoc, I came upon a plain as level for 

 several miles as a floor. In places it was covered with 

 small red stones, over which the Lost Woman must 



