18973 "The Silent City''" 



according to one Willoughby, a local woodsman, 

 the mirage of a great city which he had, in fact, 

 succeeded in photographing. Among the many A 

 buyers of the picture there was much speculation Me hoax 

 as to the origin of the apparition ; was it Montreal, 

 strangely brought into the line of vision, or some 

 cathedral town in the unexplored fastness of the 

 St. Elias range, or perhaps a glimpse of the Holy 

 City itself? But the next year Gilbert, being in 

 Alaska, looked up Willoughby, who it then ap- 

 peared knew absolutely nothing of photography. 

 The picture, moreover, was at once recognized by 

 Professor Hudson of Stanford as having been made 

 from a faded negative of Bristol, England, his former 

 home. 



Upon my return to the University I received the 

 report of an expedition I had sent to Guadalupe, a 

 rocky, uninhabited, and unprotected island off the 

 northwest coast of Mexico, from which Townsend, 

 some years before, secured four skulls of a Fur 

 Seal of Antarctic type, named (by Dr. Merriam) 

 Arctocephalus townsendi. Guadalupe, we knew, had 

 been freely raided from Ensenada and San Diego, 

 but it was hoped that some animals might still exist 

 there. A steamer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 had accordingly been detailed for an investigation 

 conducted by Professors Thoburn and Green. A FW Seals 

 thorough search by the members of this expedition f * tm . ct n 



,. , , . r 11 i Guadalupe 



disclosed many items of interest, especially the island 

 spread of a flock of goats introduced at some time 

 or other, but no traces of Fur Seal were found, and 

 townsendi must therefore be regarded as extinct. 



H6oi 3 



