6 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



the sea-lions, lumpish, uncouth forms, flippered, 

 reversed in shape, with throats like the caves 

 of ^Eolus, hollow, hoarse, discordant ; and higher 

 up, on every jutting bench and shelf, in every 

 weathered rift, over every jog of the ragged 

 cliffs, to their bladed backs and pointed peaks, 

 swarmed the sea-birds, web-footed, amphibious, 

 wave-shaped, with stormy voices given them by 

 the winds that sweep in from the sea. And their 

 numbers were the numbers of the sea. 



Crude, crowded, weltering, such life could 

 never have been brought forth and nurtured by 

 the dry land ; her breasts had withered at the 

 birth. Only the bowels of the wide, wet sea could 

 breed these heaps, these cones of life that rose vol- 

 canic from the waves, their craters clouded by the 

 smoke of wings, their belted bases rumbling with 

 a multi-throated thunder. The air was dank with 

 the must of a closed room, — closed for an aeon 

 past, — no breath of the land, no odor of herb, no 

 scent of fresh soil ; but the raw, rank smells of 

 rookery and den, saline, kelpy, fetid ; the stench 

 of fish and bedded guano ; and pools of reeking 

 ammonia where the lion herds lay sleeping on the 

 lower rocks in the sun. 



