SCHUMACHER ON KJOKKENMODDINGS OF CALIFORNIA. 49 



bottom. This mountain, about 18 miles in length and 3,000 feet 

 high, descends in innumerable steep gulches and ravines, and often ab- 

 ruptly ends in perpendicular bluffs, some of which are nearly 1,000 feet 

 high. About 5 miles from its northwestern end, the island is almost 

 cut in two by a remarkable isthmus, forming on the northern side Isth- 

 mus Cove, and on the other, the southern side, the fine but narrow port 

 of Oatalina Harbor. The two parts of the island are connected only 

 by a narrow strip of land not 40 feet above water, and about 600 

 yards from ocean to ocean. It is spa.rsely timbered with stunted oaks 

 and some willows, with plenty of water in springs, and several wells. 

 Some mining has been done, but to no advantage. The island, which 

 was discovered by Cabrillo in 1542, belongs to James Lick, and is set- 

 tled by a few squatters, mostly engaged in stock-raising, fishing, &c. 

 The Government barracks at the isthmus — quite imposing buildings in 

 this solitude — are still in good condition, and offer now shelter to picnic 

 parties from the neighboring mainland, as also to sheep-shearers in the 

 time of wool-clip, some signs of which it strongly bears in the remaining 

 filth and kitchen-refuse of the shearer. Rattlesnakes and centipedes 

 are not scarce, and tbe former we caught on the very porch of the bar- 

 racks. In addition to the small gray fox,[*J the only wild animal on the 

 other ^islands, we find here the ground-squirrel plentiful. 



At the Isthmus Cove, we found quite extensive remains of a rancheria, 

 but all our efforts to find the graves of its former people were of no 

 avail. Back of the marshy bottom at this cove several marks of houses 

 are still noticeable, and there we found some graves. In front of the 

 barracks still can be traced, on the highest ground of the isthmus, some 

 slight depressions in tbe earth, where formerly houses of the aborigines 

 stood, probably the same which Padre de la Ascencion, chronicler of 

 Vizcaino's voyage, mentions in describing a temple with an idol erected 

 on this isthmus. The idol was much looked for, but we only found the 

 hind part of a stone figure representing an animal like a dog. Some 

 pieces of a mortar of a very hard, brick-colored porous rock were found, 

 of which material none had been noticed before. On the other side of 

 the isthmus, at Catalina Harbor, the sides rise steeply, and the ground 

 is gravelly and rocky. Here we find no signs of a settlement. With 

 our boat we made explorations to the northwest and southeastward, 

 along the eastern shore of the island. Toward the southwest, within a 

 distance of 6 miles from the cove, we found many minor and shallow 

 shell-deposits over hard ground, and in connection with them very dis- 

 tinct marks of two, three, sometimes five houses, but failed to discover 

 any graves. All these places had been overrun by miners, and we there- 

 fore found only fragments, where we otherwise could have made quite a 

 collection in surface-finds. To the northward we visited a shell-mound, 

 at Johnson's place, which returned no surface' finds, being so often visited 

 by picnic parties, neither are graves traceable. Except a few skeletons 



[* The animal here mentioaed by the author is the Urocyon littpralis of Baird. — Ed.] 

 4 BULL 



