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FOREST AND STREAM. 
223 
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Cardon or Thistle Cactus. 
Cabrillos. 
Guarda, looking north and west from trail on top of hill. 
Sealions near Lobera. Timoleo hy stone piles on hill. 
THE ANGEL OF THE GUAflD. 
Looking east from north dyke of Corral de las Viboras. 
Hernando. 
went back to the boat. It was singular to see how care- 
fully seals choose a rough and stony spot for a hauling 
ground.. 
Just behind this beach lay a little sandy flat, fenced on 
three sides with steep hills, but not a track or sign of a 
seal was found there. They love the rough stones, and 
the rougher, it would seem, the more they love them. 
Since I am treating this subject, I will say now that the 
seal meat was soaked over night in salt water, boiled once 
a little, and a second time a good deal, and served with 
mustard. It was very dark, like the flesh of the porpoise, 
and tasted juet like boiled beef. But not one of my Mexi- 
cans, who, with the exception of my good Pancho, were 
always feeding and always hungry, would consent to taste 
seal meat. It oftended their finer sensibilities. 
At night the wind rose to a tempest, and the surf thun- 
dered on our protecting dyke. It was evident that a classic 
"colla" had set in, and that we were prisoners as long as it 
lasted. 
In fact, it was not until the third day that the embargo 
was raised, and I had ample time meanwhile to peer into 
the crannies of the Corral de las Viboras. We found in one 
place a torpid rattlesnake, which we killed and measured. 
The snakes on the islet are uniformly of small size, though 
they are said to be very poisonous. This one, though he 
had nine rattles, was but 28in. long and lin. in diameter. 
He was of a very light cafe cm lait color, with a diamond 
pattern until within l^in. of the rattles, when the mark- 
ings -^re reduced fo alternate bands of black and white. 
The snakes on Guarda Island, on the contrary, are very 
large, and one immense fellow was skinned and stufled 
for the Columbian Exposition, at Chicago. 
Along the shores and in the lagoons are very plentiful 
coralline, or spongy growths ■ called "riscos," which give 
the Mexicans quantities of pure lime. 
One further observation was made which may have an 
interest. We found on the top of the cliffs, two ospreys' 
nests. One had two eggs in it; the other had two young 
birds, one of which had already succumbed to the storm. 
These ospreys seem to have been hatched nearly two 
months earlier than our Northern birds. 
I braced myself carefully and tried to get a picture of 
this nest, but the gale was so strong that the camera quiv- 
ered like a violin string, and the photograph makes you 
dizzy to look at. 
Finally we got away from our enforced seclusion at the 
corral, and spent the next three days in hard work on 
Guarda. 
Among the hills near the shore where I first landed I 
found a few examples of circles of rough stones, usually 
on the edge of some small flat between the ridges. I had 
heard that there was a collection of such circles, number- 
ing about 150, in the neighborhood on a red mountain. 
The mountains were all red, but neither my somewhat 
worthless Indian nor Pancho nor I could find this collec- 
tion in our limited time, and so we set out to follow up the 
fragments of the trail and find out whither it led. 
Starting west from the hill which had been the terminus 
of our previous expedition, we found unmistakable pieces 
of trail, whose age was sometimes indicated by dwarfed 
but ancient trees and shrubs growing in the very middle, 
marked distinctly on the more dilficult ground and invisi- 
ble in smoother places, stretching inland some four or five 
miles. 
At a point near the trail and a mUe and a half from the 
coast were two inclosurea of stone; one of which was the 
largest I encountered, the longer axis measuring 24ft. I 
made both a plan and a photograph of these inclosures. 
The picture will show their general appearance, but the 
larger inclosure is foreshortened and the plate does not 
bring out properly the small inclosures which, in these in- 
stances, and in many others, are joined on to the larger 
structures. 
A quarter of a mile beyond this place the trail dipped 
into a rocky arroyo, now entirely dry, but which seemed 
to have been roughly cleaned out for a water hole in time 
past. 
A mile further on lies a barren mesa, which is fairly 
crowded in one part with these small inclosures and the 
rough stone piles we have before noticed. 
We penetrated inland several miles beyond this and 
got extensive views of the country, but we lost the trail 
completely a mile and a half beyond the monuments on 
the mesa and thereafter saw no sign of human handiwork. 
Some digging below the stone piles showed that the sur- 
face had not been disturbed, and that the boulders and 
'"caliche," or cement formation, were in place. This, as far 
it goes, tends to show that the stone piles did not mark 
graves. In my haste I neglected to dig into the stone in 
closures, and I greatly regret this oversight. In the North 
we frequently meet circles of stones on the prairie which 
had been used formerly to hold down the edges of an In- 
dian lodge. The inclosures here do not seem to me fitted 
for that; first, many of these figures are not circles, but 
oblong; then, most of them do not exceed 6ft. in diameter; 
and in any event the small adjoining circles would seem 
to be useless for a lodge. 
The entire area on the southern portion of Guarda in 
which we found signs of genuinely ancient work was not 
more than seven or eight miles long by four miles broad at 
the broadest part, perhaps as great a comparative area as 
the district called by old New Yorkers Greenwich Village 
was to the whole surface of Manhattan Island. The re- 
mains we found consisted solely in disconnected portions 
of an old trail and in stone heaps and rough circles, and 
the use or intention of the last two classes of monuments is 
very obscure. 
There is nothing to indicate that average rainfall or 
other climatic conditions have varied appreciably in the 
Gulf of California in historic times, or for many cen- 
turies past. In some localities year after year goes by 
without rain. Don Jose tells me that in an experience of 
sixteen years he has only known of two rainstorms at 
Santa Marta, near the Port of the Angels. To be sure, one 
of these storms was a heavy one, and a good part of the 
little mining town, which was built upon the foundation of 
a high barometer, was swept, tramway and all, some six 
miles down the mountain into the sea. 
A rainfall so precarious would afford no permanent sup- 
ply of fresh water on the southern part of Guarda Island. 
There is certainly no such supply there now, and the local- 
ities within the previously inhabited zone are absolutely 
dry, and, except for a few cactus and other thirsty shrubs, 
a desert. 
The population must have been migratory and occa- 
sional. A few miserable families of fishing Indians might 
come over from either mainland in rainy years to cross 
the bar to the Corral de las Viboras at low tide and feast 
on seals or oysters, returning after each expedition to the 
nearest water hole, following on from pool to pool as the 
supplies dried up, and leaving the island when these 
reservoirs were exhausted. The stone heaps may have 
been used in some instances for wind-breaks by men on 
look-out, or they may have had some religious signifi- 
cance. They do not seem to be burial monuments over 
interments, and they certainly were ill-adapted and ab- 
surdly placed for any military use. 
The stone inclosures may possibly mark sites of former 
dwellings or fulfill some funerary or superstitious purpose. 
Comparative ethnologists could perhaps form a reliable 
opinion on these subjects, but even an amateur is justified 
in saying that these relics mark only transitory sojourns of 
a scanty and degraded race. 
While our boat was lying off the coast here, the boys 
caught a fish called a "mero," weighing 20 or 251b8., 
shaped like a jewfish, with small spots on a dark ground. 
We also had several of the common "cabrillas," which 
weighed 6 or 7lbs. apiece, and were marked similarly to 
the "mero." A large fish called a "tortoava," said to be 
our sea bass, wriggled free from the harpoon, but we got a 
little fiend of a fish called a "peje puerco" or sometimes a 
"trigger fish." The front dorsal fin of the "peje puerco" 
has two prominent bony spines in it. The longer one, 
nearer the head, can hardly be depressed, even by the 
use of great force, but if you put your finger on the other 
spine it falls at once and brings with it the obstinate spine 
in front, folding the entire fin like a fan. 
After we had gone over the portion of the island al- 
ready described, we took advantage of a calm night and 
pulled and drifted up the coast some ten miles above our 
first landing. 
This brought us a mile or two south of an arroyo called 
the "arroyo de las tinajas," that is, of the water ho'es. 
Don Jose had found some pools far up this canon in 
former years, and I wished to examine them. Setting out 
early in the morning with Pancho and the Indian I soon 
reached the narrow bed of the gully, and we went up this 
to the crest of the ridge which formed its water-shed. 
The former water holes, about three miles from the 
beach, were entirely dry, even when deepened a couple of 
feet by digging, and the doves which used to haunt this 
valley were gone. We did, however, see some bees, which 
Pancho said must have been blown to the coast since his 
last visit five or six years ago, and, a mile or two above 
the dry water holes, we found a hollow in the rock which, 
had caught some passing cloud and wrung from it about 
fifty gallons of delicious water. Above this all was volcanic 
slide rock and jagged ridge. 
This arroyo gives a fine geologic section. About ha,lf 
way up to the top, going from the sea, you pass out of 
stratified rocks into the granite core of the island, which 
sinks again a couple of miles beyond and gives place to 
shales and conglomerates which are again overlaid in the 
highest regions by a thin coating of volcanic products. 
In the deep sands of the gully several plants were found 
which do not grow on the barren hills and mesa. There 
were sixteen "taco" or fan palms by count, most of them 
about 3ft. high, but some of more considerable dimensions, 
also a plant which Pancho told me was wild tobacco. 
Iguanas rattled among the brush and pebbles; a large owl 
fluttered out of a dim nook, and a great blackish bird 
called an "aguilon," said to carry off lambs and calves, was 
trying hard to escape the attacks of a small raven, but of 
mammalian life there was not a trace, and I incline to 
think that there is not even a mouse or a ground rat on 
Guarda. 
A variety of cactus called "cardon" or thistle cactus here 
reaches a great size. In the picture I made to show the 
character of these growths, the more prominent cactus is 
to be sure a ' 'cardon," but in this instance it only fills the 
oflice of the "foreground plant." The larger cactus in the 
distance can be gauged by the 6ft. man who stands along- 
side. 
Another very singular cactus, called the "cirio," I saw 
later on near the San Juan mine. This plant, which 
grows at times 30ft. high, is found only at an elevation of 
several thousand feet above the sea, and in but one or two 
localities. It has a smooth bark, something like a birch 
tree, with a multitude of little feathery branches, some- 
what thorny, on every side, and when I saw it had tufts 
of yellow, flowering shoots on top. 
My camera was not at hand when the "cirio" was met, 
but I got a piece of an old negative which shows a group 
of these cactus, somewhat out of focus, and may serve to 
illustrate their habit. 
When we had finished exploring the "arroyo of the 
water-holes," I found on my return to the boat that our 
water supply was about two-thirds gone. It was practi- 
cally impossible to renew the supply from the scanty pool 
far up the mountain. Even good men would have found 
the task very serious, and my men were born tired and 
had improved this natural aptitude by long practice. 
To continue north with the impending threat of another 
northwester would probably have sent us back in a few 
days waterless and with nothing gained. 
With regret I was forced to order a return to the Port of 
the Angels by the southern route, leaving the northern 
part of Guarda un visited. I am told that on this northern 
part, aside from abundant traces of sealers and fishermen, 
there are remains of a graded road 30ft. wide, besides a 
