WHY WE DON'T DESERT 39 



sailors on the brig. Bean soup only distin- 

 guished Christmas from the day that had gone 

 before and the day that came after. No liquor 

 or tempting dishes came to the forecastle. It 

 was the usual day of hard work from dawn to 

 dark. 



After two weeks of variable weather during 

 which we were often becalmed, we put into Tur- 

 tle bay, midway down the coast of Lower Cali- 

 fornia, and dropped anchor. 



Turtle bay is a beautiful little land-locked 

 harbor on an uninhabited coast. There was no 

 village or any human habitation on its shores. 

 A desolate, treeless country, seamed by gullies 

 and scantily covered with sun-dried grass, rolled 

 away to a chain of high mountains which forms 

 the backbone of the peninsula of Lower Califor- 

 nia. These mountains were perhaps thirty 

 miles from the coast; they were gray and appar- 

 ently barren of trees or any sort of herbage, and 

 looked to be ridges of naked granite. The des- 

 ert character of the landscape was si surprise, 

 as we were almost within the tropics. 



We spent three weeks of hard work in Turtle 



