Chapter XV 

 The Wild Goat on Orizaba 



WHEN Cabrillo came up the California coast 

 in 1542, he sighted a large island with two 

 prominent peaks, and from almost any- 

 where in the mountains of Southern California they can 

 be seen rising from the sea. 



Cabrillo named the island, after one of his ships, La 

 Vittoria, but the name given it by Viscaino, in 1645, 

 Santa Catalina, from the saint's day of his arrival, 

 has held down through the years. One of the peaks is 

 called Orizaba, and the other Black Jack. They are not 

 high ; though from a distance they might be considered 

 in the five-thousand-foot class, twenty-two hundred 

 would be nearer the truth ; yet Orizaba and Black Jack 

 have summits and slopes that in steepness might belong 

 to the top of some wind-swept peak ten thousand feet in 

 air. I say this, as I have been to the peaks of both 

 mountains on horseback, and, with some knowledge of 

 trails in California, never found myself in quite so dis- 

 agreeable a position as one afternoon when trying to 

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