60 SUMMER 



against the high circling walls, was the deep, men- 

 acing grumble of the bellowing sea-lions, as, through 

 the muffle of surf and sea-fowl, herd after herd lum- 

 bered headlong into the foam. 



It was a strange, wild scene. Hardly a mile from 

 the Oregon coast, but cut off by breaker and bar 

 from the abrupt, uninhabited shore, the three rocks 

 of the Reservation, each pierced with its resounding 

 arch, heaved their huge shoulders from the waves 

 straight up, high, towering, till our little steamer 

 coasted their dripping sides like some puffing pygmy. 



Each rock was perhaps as large as a solid city 

 square and as high as the tallest of sky-scrapers ; 

 immense, monstrous piles, each of them, and run 

 through by these great caverns or arches, dim, drip- 

 ping, filled with the noise of the waves and the beat 

 of thousands of wings. 



They were of no part or lot with the dry land. Their 

 wave-scooped basins were set with purple starfish and 

 filled with green and pink anemones, and beaded 

 many deep with mussels of amethyst and jet that 

 glittered in the clear beryl waters ; and, above the 

 jeweled basins, like fabled beasts of old, lay the sea- 

 lions, uncouth forms, flippered, reversed in shape, 

 with throats like the caves of ^Eolus, hollow, hoarse, 

 discordant; and higher up, on every jutting bench 

 and shelf, in every weathered rift, over every jog of 

 the ragged cliffs, to their bladed backs and pointed 

 peaks, swarmed the sea-birds, webf ooted, amphibious. 



