Point Lobos 195 



Lucia, flows the little river El Carmelo, so named by 

 the Spanish priests, a hundred and fifty years ago. 

 Here was one of their mission churches, its ruins may 

 still be seen, and the traveler, if the season favor, may 

 yet pluck pears from trees of priestly planting just 

 across the river. This is historic ground. El Carmelo 

 is however a small short stream fed by springs and 

 seeps, and Carmelo Bay is only the river's mouth, all 

 choked and barred by shifting sands. 



Point Lobos, then we say, is an out-thrust, an out- 

 thrust of a mountain, but that must not signify too much. 

 In this locality the mountains are nowhere very high, 

 three or four thousand feet at most, here by the shore 

 not more than half so high, diminishing as they ap- 

 proach the ocean so that Point Lobos is simply a worn 

 and battered spur, perhaps a hundred feet high where 

 the wall goes sheer down to meet the breakers, perhaps 

 two hundred feet high at the highest point, a hundred 

 rods or more back from the cliff edge. 



Now the promontory is crowned with trees, and the 

 whole shore northward is wooded for several miles. East 

 and south are the desert ; westward is the sea, but on the 

 westward rocks are acres of kelp, while hiding in every 

 rocky niche and cranny a most beautiful live-forever 

 finds lodging permanent, and decks the whole rocky face 

 of these beetling cliffs with perennial bloom. At the 

 margin of the cliff the trees are all distorted, gnarled, 

 and twisted by perpetual struggle with the ocean wind. 

 Many of the old warriors in this battle are already dead, 

 but still stand as if immortal, their time-defying trunks 

 and naked arms bleached white as the snows of winter. 



