BOTANY OF SAN MIGUEL. 79 
gnarled branches measured thirty feet long, all of them per- 
fectly horizontal and not more than a foot above the ground, 
This extinction of the former ligneous vegetation, now 
nearly total, appears to have been effected by the agency of 
the sands which have been drifted from the beaches of the 
windward parts of the island across its whole length, and 
whieh are to-day, partly piled in such magnificent heaps high 
over the northern side of Cuylers Harbor, and partly still 
fast eneroaching on and burying year by year, as the dwellers 
there showed me, more and more of the fertile grassy acres of 
the eastern portion. Those acquainted with the changeable- 
ness of sand dunes on Californian coasts wherever they occur 
will be able to understand how several miles of San Miguel 
rhus thicket might be buried deeply in one week, and then 
unearthed by the same agency of sea winds a few years, or 
even one year, afterwards. 
Before passing to consider more particularly its botany I 
would record an observation or two relating to the ethnology 
of this curious islet. The great number of low rocky points 
and long stretches of reef, many of them connected with the 
main island, the higher of them resorted to by myriads of sea 
lion, seal, and water fowl, the lower and periodically sub- 
merged covered with shell fish ; the plentiful occurrence of 
fresh water springs along all the northern and eastern shores 
—all these and other circumstances conspired to render Ciqui- 
muymu* a paradise for any such race of people as, for exam- 
ple, the aborigines of our far northwestern coasts 3 and it has 
evidently sustained, at no very remote point of time, a dense 
aboriginal population. This is attested by the fact that the 
entire coast line of four and twenty miles is an almost un- 
interrupted line of kitehenmidding, marked here and there by 
heaps of human bones, many of them, particularly crania and 
jaw bones with teeth, in a good state of preservation. One 
bit of grassy headland on the southern shore well westward, a 
favorite eamping ground with seal hunters, has been closely 
—'' The aboriginal name of the island. See Prof. Davidson in Bulletin 
6, Cal. Acad. Science, p. 333. 
