62 
THIi CONDOR 
VoL. VI 
on their way up the northwest coast nanied the islands ‘‘Los Farallones de los 
h'rayles” in honor of the monks who had discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769, 
the same year that the Franciscans founded their first mission in Alta California, 
at San Diego. The first settlers on the islands, we know, were Russians from the 
north who came with Aleuts to fish and seal hunt. There remain today, on the 
southeastern part of tlie island, the well-preserved stone walls of their low huts, 
but the date of their occupancy is unknown. 
The islands are formed of crystalline granite, a ridge rising many hundred 
feet above the ocean floor. vSugar Loaf Rock in F'isherman’s Bay is an exception 
being a conglomerate of coarse gravel standing isolated 185 feet above sea-level. 
South F'arallone Island is the largest of the group. At water line the rocks are of 
a blackish brown wdiere the surf beats, and then above high water mark change 
to a yellow or light grayish tone over all the island, where not occupied by the 
roosting or nesting areas of the sea-fowl, or changed by the presence of introduced 
plants. The granite readily yields to a pick, and otTers a firm footing, but is rather 
hard on shoe-leatlier. vSliore lines are all cut up into great channel-like troughs. 
WEST END ACROSS BREAKER BAY 
with arched grottos running far into the rock and filled with gorgeously tinted 
marine life. There are natural bridges, pot holes, and shelving ledges of all des- 
criptions. 
I will go into a general description of the island life only so far as it may tend 
to show the changes which have occurred in the colony life of the feathered occu- 
pants as noted in 1113^ former visits to the island in 1885-87. and in 1903. Naturally 
many changes would occur when so man^/ thousands of sea-fowl have been more 
or less disturbed during the nesting season for the past fifty years. In 1850 the 
F''arallone Egg Company was organized to collect and ship the eggs of the Califor- 
nia murre {Uria t. califoniica) for the San F'rancisco market, and by 1856 it was 
estimated that three or four millions of eggs had been shipped." Twenty-five 
thousand dozen a year were then said to have been taken up to 1873.* This fig- 
ure then decreased to about 15,000 dozen, which was not far from the amount 
a Uutcliiiig's Magazine, Aug. 1856, p. 53. 
b Harper's Montlily, -April, 1874, p. 623. 
