— 
CARMEN ISLAND. 137 
as the water dries off again, all holes or irregularities of sur- 
face caused by the removal of the salt become refilled with 
crystals and obliterated. 
; It was the opinion of the American resident superintendent 
that this vast accumulation of salt was washed down by the 
rains from the mountains, in which he supposed that large 
quantities of disintegrated rock-salt were to be found. For, 
even supposing that this was originally an estuary of the Gulf, 
it is hard to account by that theory for the apparently 
inexhaustible supply, and for the fresh accumulations which 
still continue to form, although the sea has long since ceased 
to enter the basin. The purity of the salt, the absence of 
sand, and the great depth of the deposition cannot certainly be 
accounted for by the laws which regulate ordinary salt basins. 
Seated beside me at dinner on the second day of my life 
on board ship, I found a very tall and gentlemanly Southerner. 
He had all the external refinement of a man who had mixed 
during a long life in the best European society, and had 
looked upon a princely fortune as a matter of course. The 
\ civil war had ruined him, as it had thousands like him; 
and here he was now, at the age of seventy, carrying oysters 
from Carmen Island to sell at San Francisco. 
The San Francisco oysters very much resemble our 
| natives. They are round, fat, plump, full-flavoured, and very 
- good, but do not suit the taste of those who have long 
~ enjoyed the luxury of the large delicate molluscs which in- 
| habit the Atlantic seaboard. There are fine beds of the long- 
shelled oyster in the Gulf of California ; and as they will not 
grow in the Pacific Ocean, my Southern friend found that it 
- paid him well to transport them 1,700 miles by steamer, and 
sell them on landing at six shillings a dozen, provided that 
~ not more than half the cargo had died on the passage. 
