76 PITTONIA. 
Harris and came into the still waters of the truly beautiful 
inlet known as Cuylers Harbor. To the northward of our 
anchorage there was no beach, but above the low line of black 
eliffs arose banks of white sand two hundred feet high, their 
surface so smooth that from below the eye could follow the 
trail of every mouse that had lately traversed any portion of 
it; but eastward and southward ran a fine eurve of white 
beach, above which, all the steeps were covered with shrubby 
lupines and erysimum together with interspersed patches of 
green suædas, yellow eschscholtzias, purple abronias and red 
eriogonum, besides abundance of malacothrix and astragalus ; 
and nearly half the species which I noticed here while first 
wending my way upward to the summit of the island were at 
that time unknown to botanical science. 
Topographically San Miguel is of the nature of a table-land, 
its shores rising for the most part abruptly to the height of 
from 200 to 300 feet. Its surface although not mountainous 
isuneven. The two greatest elevations, both of them rounded . 
and mound-like, are respectively eastward and westward of the 
middle of the island; the eastern one having an altitude of 
861, the western 850 feet: and Point Harris, a bold promon- 
tory jutting far out upon the northeast side is 550 feet high, 
the peninsula of which it is the terminus forming the shelter 
of Cuyler’s Harbor from northwest winds and waves ; and the 
harbor, perhaps two miles long and a mile or more wide, is 
rendered perfect by Prince’s islet, a quarter of a mile long 
and 303 feet high, which rises in the way of occasional south- 
west storms. The shore line is extremely irregular, measur- 
ing 24 miles, while low reefs are common on all sides and at 
various distances from the shore. 
Difficult of navigation as, owing to the abounding reefs and 
prevailing fogs, these waters are, the little harbor aforenamed 
is more secure when reached than any to be found on all our 
continental coast line for a thousand miles or more. It was 
here that Cabrillo wintered as long ago as 1542-3, and this 
island holds, in some unknown spot, the mortal remains of 
that earliest maritime explorer of California, for he died here. 
