FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO. 203 



guessed was the surf lashing the shore. Emerging from a 

 maze of ravines and sloughs I climbed a sand hill and to my 

 joy I saw the waters of the Pacific, which the sun was just 

 beginning to silver from his position on the summit of the 

 distant Sierra. I have often thought how I traveled thirty-five 

 hundred miles to see one ocean after living within one hundred 

 miles of another all my life previous to my overland journey. 



I could have gone into more extensive raptures over my first 

 sight of the Pacific had I been in a better position to appre- 

 ciate it. We have heard of Balboa's feelings, when from a 

 " lone peak of Darien " he first glimpsed the same sea ; but if 

 he had walked all night lugging a pair of blankets and an 

 unseemly carpet-bag, with nothing to drink and little to eat, 

 and, from wearing tight boots, with blisters on his ankles as 

 big as the quarter-dollars his purse lacked, he would have felt 

 about as I felt. Still I must admit to a thrill of admiration as 

 from the far sea line I saw the waves roll in and lash the 

 miniature " lone peak " on which I stood. 



I had struck the coast line at a point on the Bay of San 

 Pedro which was too shallow for anchorage, but which is now 

 near the site of Wilmington, a settlement which has blotted 

 the " town " of San Pedro off the map. I have lately seen a 

 photograph of this part of the Ba}^ and the sight of the railroad 

 tracks laid under the bluff, the cars thereon, and the piles of 

 lumber and the warehouses, so contrast with the place as I saw 

 it, that I give an illustration of the landing place of 1858. On 

 account of the dangers of this harbor a breakwater has been 

 built to accommodate the increased commerce which the growtli 

 of Los Angeles has brought here. 



Readers of Dana's " Tavo Years before the Mast " will 

 remember San Pedro Bay as the scene of the flogging and of 

 innumerable hardships of loading and unloading cargoes. I 

 have often experienced a fellow feeling for the author, as each 

 of our experiences on the California coast developed about the 



