THE FARALLON ISLANDS.
If you approach the harbor of San Francisco from the west, your first
sight of land will be a collection of picturesque rocks known as the
Farallones, or, more fully, the Farallones de los Frayles. They are six
rugged islets, whose peaks lift up their heads in picturesque masses out
of the ocean, twenty-three and a half miles from the Golden Gate, the
famous entrance of San Francisco Bay. Farallon is a Spanish word, meaning
a small pointed islet in the sea.
These rocks, probably of volcanic origin, and bare and desolate, lie in
a line from south-east to north-west--curiously enough the same line
in which the islands of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Island group have been
thrown up. Geologists say they are the outcrop of an immense granite dike.
The southernmost island, which is the largest--just as Hawaii, the
southernmost of the Sandwich Island group, is also the biggest--extends
for nearly a mile east and west, and is three hundred and forty feet high.
It is composed of broken and water-worn rocks, forming numerous angular
peaks, and having several caves; and the rock, mostly barren and bare,
has here and there a few weeds and a little grass. At one point there is a
small beach, and at another a depression; but the fury of the waves makes
landing at all times difficult, and for the most part impossible.
The Farallones are seldom visited by travelers or pleasure-seekers. The
wind blows fiercely here most of the time; the ocean is rough; and, to
persons subject to sea-sickness, the short voyage is filled with the
misery of that disease. Yet they contain a great deal that is strange and
curious. On the highest point of the South Farallon the Government has
placed a light-house, a brick tower seventeen feet high, surmounted by a
lantern and illuminating apparatus. It is a revolving white light, showing
a prolonged flash of ten seconds duration once in a minute. The light
is about three hundred and sixty feet above the sea, and with a clear
atmosphere is visible, from a position ten feet high, twenty-five and a
half miles distant; from an elevation of sixty feet, it can be seen nearly
thirty-one miles away; and it is plainly visible from Sulphur Peak on the
main-land, thirty-four hundred and seventy-one feet high, and sixty-four
and a half miles distant. The light-house is in latitude 37° 41' 8" north,
and longitude 122° 59' 05" west.
On our foggy Western coast it has been necessary to place the light-houses
low, because if they stood too high their light would be hidden in
fog-banks and low clouds. The tower on the South Farallon is, therefore,
low; and this, no doubt, is an advantage also to the light-keepers, who
are less exposed to the buffetings of the storm than if their labor and
care lay at a higher elevation.
As the Farallones lie in the track of vessels coming from the westward to
San Francisco, the light is one of the most important, as it is also one
of the most powerful on our Western coast; and it is supplemented by a
fog-whistle, which is one of the most curious contrivances of this kind
in the world. It is a huge trumpet, six inches in diameter at its smaller
end, and blown by the rush of air through a cave or passage connecting
with the ocean.
One of the numerous caves worn into the rocks by the surf had a hole at
the top, through which the incoming breakers violently expelled the air
they carried before them. Such spout-holes are not uncommon on rugged,
rocky coasts. There are several on the Mendocino coast, and a number on
the shores of the Sandwich Islands. This one, however, has been utilized
by the ingenuity of man. The mouth-piece of the trumpet or fog-whistle is
fixed against the aperture in the rock, and the breaker, dashing in with
venomous spite, or the huge bulging wave which would dash a ship to pieces
and drown her crew in a single effort, now blows the fog-whistle and warns
the mariner off. The sound thus produced has been heard at a distance of
seven or eight miles. It has a peculiar effect, because it has no regular
period; depending upon the irregular coming in of the waves, and upon
their similarly irregular force, it is blown somewhat as an idle boy would
blow his penny trumpet. It ceases entirely for an hour and a half at low
water, when the mouth of the cave or passage is exposed.
[Illustration: LIGHT-HOUSE ON THE SOUTH FARALLON.]
[Illustration: ARCH AT WEST END, FARALLON ISLANDS.]
The life of the keepers of the Farallon light is singularly lonely and
monotonous. Their house is built somewhat under the shelter of the rocks,
but they live in what to a landsman would seem a perpetual storm; the
ocean roars in their ears day and night; the boom of the surf is their
constant and only music; the wild scream of the sea-birds, the howl of
the sea-lions, the whistle and shriek of the gale, the dull, threatening
thunder of the vast breakers, are the dreary and desolate sounds which
lull them to sleep at night, and assail their ears when they awake. In the
winter months even their supply vessel, which, for the most part, is their
only connection with the world, is sometimes unable to make a landing for
weeks at a time. Chance visitors they see only occasionally, and at that
distance at which a steamer is safe from the surf, and at which a girl
could not even recognize her lover. The commerce of San Francisco passes
before their eyes, but so far away that they can not tell the ships and
steamers which sail by them voiceless and without greeting; and of the
events passing on the planet with which they have so frail a social tie
they learn only at long and irregular intervals. The change from sunshine
to fog is the chief variety in their lives; the hasty landing of supplies
the great event in their months. They can not even watch the growth of
trees and plants; and to a child born and reared in such a place, a sunny
lee under the shelter of rocks is probably the ideal of human felicity.
Except the rock of Tristan d'Acunha in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, I have
never seen an inhabited spot which seemed so utterly desolate, so entirely
separated from the world, whose people appeared to me to have such a
slender hold on mankind. Yet for their solace they know that a powerful
Government watches over their welfare, and--if that is any comfort--that,
thirty miles away, there are lights and music and laughter and singing, as
well as crowds, and all the anxieties and annoyances incidental to what we
are pleased to call civilization.
But though these lonely rocks contain but a small society of human
beings--the keepers and their families--they are filled with animal life;
for they are the home of a multitude of sea-lions, and of vast numbers of
birds and rabbits.
The rabbits, which live on the scanty herbage growing among the rooks,
are descended from a few pair brought here many years ago, when some
speculative genius thought to make a huge rabbit-warren of these rocks for
the supply of the San Francisco market. These little animals are not very
wild. In the dry season they feed on the bulbous roots of the grass, and
sometimes they suffer from famine. In the winter and spring they are fat,
and then their meat is white and sweet. During summer and fall they are
not fit to eat.
They increase very rapidly, and at not infrequent intervals they
overpopulate the island, and then perish by hundreds of starvation and
the diseases which follow a too meagre diet. They are of all colors,
and though descended from some pairs of tame white rabbits, seem to have
reverted in color to the wild race from which they originated.
The Farallones have no snakes.
The sea-lions, which congregate by thousands upon the cliffs, and bark,
and howl, and shriek and roar in the caves and upon the steep sunny
slopes, are but little disturbed, and one can usually approach them within
twenty or thirty yards. It is an extraordinarily interesting sight to
see these marine monsters, many of them bigger than an ox, at play in the
surf, and to watch the superb skill with which they know how to control
their own motions when a huge wave seizes them, and seems likely to dash
them to pieces against the rocks. They love to lie in the sun upon the
bare and warm rocks; and here they sleep, crowded together, and lying upon
each other in inextricable confusion.
[Illustration: SEA-LIONS.]
The bigger the animal, the greater his ambition appears to be to climb
to the highest summit; and when a huge, slimy beast has with infinite
squirming attained a solitary peak, he does not tire of raising his
sharp-pointed, maggot-like head, and complacently looking about him. They
are a rough set of brutes--rank bullies, I should say; for I have watched
them repeatedly as a big one shouldered his way among his fellows, reared
his huge front to intimidate some lesser seal which had secured a favorite
spot, and first with howls, and if this did not suffice, with teeth and
main force, expelled the weaker from his lodgment. The smaller sea-lions,
at least those which have left their mothers, appear to have no rights
which any one is bound to respect. They get out of the way with an abject
promptness which proves that they live in terror of the stronger members
of the community; but they do not give up their places without harsh
complaints and piteous groans.
Plastered against the rocks, and with their lithe and apparently boneless
shapes conformed to the rude and sharp angles, they are a wonderful, but
not a graceful or pleasing sight. At a little distance they look like huge
maggots, and their slow, ungainly motions upon the land do not lessen this
resemblance. Swimming in the ocean, at a distance from the land, they are
inconspicuous objects, as nothing but the head shows above water, and that
only at intervals. But when the vast surf which breaks in mountain waves
against the weather side of the Farallones with a force which would in
a single sweep dash to pieces the biggest Indiaman--when such a surf,
vehemently and with apparently irresistible might, lifts its tall
white head, and with a deadly roar lashes the rocks half-way to their
summit--then it is a magnificent sight to see a dozen or half a hundred
great sea-lions at play in the very midst and fiercest part of the boiling
surge, so completely masters of the situation that they allow themselves
to be carried within a foot or two of the rocks, and at the last and
imminent moment, with an adroit twist of their bodies, avoid the shock,
and, diving, re-appear beyond the breaker.
As I sat, fascinated with this weird spectacle of the sea-lions, which
seemed to me like an unhallowed prying into some hidden and monstrous
secret of nature, I could better realize the fantastic and brutal wildness
of life in the earlier geological ages, when monsters and chimeras dire
wallowed about our unripe planet, and brute force of muscles and lungs
ruled among the populous hordes of beasts which, fortunately for us,
have perished, leaving us only this great wild sea-beast as a faint
reminiscence of their existence. I wondered what Dante would have
thought--and what new horrors his gloomy imagination would have conjured,
could he have watched this thousand or two of sea-lions at their sports.
The small, sloping, pointed head of the creature gives it, to me, a
peculiarly horrible appearance. It seems to have no brain, and presents
an image of life with the least intelligence. It is in reality not without
wits, for one needs only to watch the two or three specimens in the great
tank at Woodward's Gardens, when they are getting fed, to see that they
instantly recognize their keeper, and understand his voice and motion.
But all their wit is applied to the basest uses. Greed for food is their
ruling passion, and the monstrous lightning-like lunges through the water,
the inarticulate shrieks of pleasure or of fury as he dashes after his
food or comes up without it, the wild, fierce eyes, the eager and brutal
vigor with which he snatches a morsel from a smaller fellow-creature, the
reliance on strength alone, and the abject and panic-struck submission
of the weaker to the stronger--all this shows him a brute of the lowest
character.
Yet there is a wonderful snake-like grace in the lithe, swift motions of
the animal when he is in the surf. You forget the savage blood-shot
eyes, the receding forehead, the clumsy figure and awkward motion, as he
wriggles up the steep rocks, the moment you see him at his superb sport in
the breakers. It seemed to me that he was another creature. The eye looks
less baleful, and even joyous; every movement discloses conscious power;
the excitement of the sport sheds from him somewhat of the brutality which
re-appears the moment he lands or seeks his food.
So far as I could learn, the Farallon sea-lions are seldom disturbed by
men seeking profit from them. In the egging season one or two are shot to
supply oil to the lamps of the eggers; and occasionally one is caught
for exhibition on the main-land. How do they catch a sea-lion? Well, they
lasso him, and, odd as it sounds, it is the best and probably the only way
to capture this beast. An adroit Spaniard, to whom the lasso or reata
is like a fifth hand, or like the trunk to the elephant, steals up to a
sleeping congregation, fastens his eye on the biggest one of the lot, and,
biding his time, at the first motion of the animal, with unerring skill
flings his loose rawhide noose, and then holds on for dear life. It is the
weight of an ox and the vigor of half a dozen that he has tugging at the
other end of his rope, and if a score of men did not stand ready to help,
and if it were not possible to take a turn of the reata around a solid
rock, the seal would surely get away.
Moreover, they must handle the beast tenderly, for it is easily injured.
Its skin, softened by its life in the water, is quickly cut by the rope;
its bones are easily broken; and its huge frame, too rudely treated,
may be so hurt that the life dies out of it. As quickly as possible the
captured sea-lion is stuffed into a strong box or cage, and here, in a
cell too narrow to permit movement, it roars and yelps in helpless fury,
until it is transported to its tank. Wild and fierce as it is, it seems to
reconcile itself to the tank life very rapidly. If the narrow space of its
big bath-tub frets it, you do not perceive this, for hunger is its chief
passion, and with a moderately full stomach the animal does well in
captivity, of course with sufficient water.
The South Farallon is the only inhabited one of the group. The remainder
are smaller; mere rocky points sticking up out of the Pacific. The Middle
Farallon is a single rock, from fifty to sixty yards in diameter, and
twenty or thirty feet above the water. It lies two and a half miles
north-west by west from the light-house. The North Farallon consists, in
fact, of four pyramidal rocks, whose highest peak, in the centre of the
group, is one hundred and sixty feet high; the southern rock of the four
is twenty feet high. The four have a diameter of one hundred and sixty,
one hundred and eighty-five, one hundred and twenty-five, and thirty-five
yards respectively, and the most northern of the islets bears north 64°
west from the Farallon light, six and three-fifths miles distant.
All the islands are frequented by birds; but the largest, the South
Farallon, on which the light-house stands, is the favorite resort of these
creatures, who come here in astonishing numbers every summer to breed;
and it is to this island that the eggers resort at that season to obtain
supplies of sea-birds' eggs for the San Francisco market, where they have
a regular and large sale.
The birds which breed upon the Farallones are gulls, murres, shags, and
sea-parrots, the last a kind of penguin. The eggs of the shags and parrots
are not used, but the eggers destroy them to make more room for the other
birds. The gull begins to lay about the middle of May, and usually ten
days before the murre. The gull makes a rude nest of brush and sea-weed
upon the rocks; the murre does not take even this much trouble, but lays
its eggs in any convenient place on the bare rocks.
[Illustration: THE GULL'S NEST.]
The gull is soon through, but the murre continues to lay for about two
months. The egging season lasts, therefore, from the 10th or 20th of
May until the last of July. In this period the egg company which has for
eighteen years worked this field gathered in 1872 seventeen thousand nine
hundred and fifty-two dozen eggs, and in 1873 fifteen thousand two hundred
and three dozen. These brought last year in the market an average of
twenty-six cents per dozen. There has been, I was assured by the manager,
no sensible decrease in the number of the birds or the eggs during twenty
years.
From fifteen to twenty men are employed during the egging season in
collecting and shipping the eggs. They live on the island during that time
in rude shanties near the usual landing-place. The work is not amusing,
for the birds seek out the least accessible places, and the men must
follow, climbing often where a goat would almost hesitate. But this is not
the worst. The gull sits on her nest, and resists the robber who comes for
her eggs, and he must take care not to get bitten. The murre remains until
her enemy is close upon her; then she rises with a scream which often
startles a thousand or two of birds, who whirl up into the air in a dense
mass, scattering filth and guano over the eggers.
Nor is this all. The gulls, whose season of breeding is soon past, are
extravagantly fond of murre eggs; and these rapacious birds follow the
egg-gatherers, hover over their heads, and no sooner is a murre's nest
uncovered than the bird swoops down, and the egger must be extremely
quick, or the gull will snatch the prize from under his nose. So greedy
and eager are the gulls that they sometimes even wound the eggers,
striking them with their beaks. But if the gull gets an egg, he flies up
with it, and, tossing it up, swallows what he can catch, letting the shell
and half its contents fall in a shower upon the luckless and disappointed
egger below.
[Illustration: SHAGS, MURRES, AND SEA-GULLS.]
Finally, so difficult is the ground that it is impossible to carry
baskets. The egger therefore stuffs the eggs into his shirt bosom until
he has as many as he can safely carry, then clambers over rocks and down
precipices until he comes to a place of deposit, where he puts them into
baskets, to be carried down to the shore, where there are houses for
receiving them. But so skillful and careful are the gatherers that but few
eggs are broken.
The gathering proceeds daily, when it has once begun, and the whole ground
is carefully cleared off, so that no stale eggs shall remain. Thus if a
portion of the ground has been neglected for a day or two, all the eggs
must be flung into the sea, so as to begin afresh. As the season advances,
the operations are somewhat contracted, leaving a part of the island
undisturbed for breeding; and the gathering of eggs is stopped entirely
about a month before the birds usually leave the island, so as to give
them all an opportunity to hatch out a brood.
[Illustration: CONTEST FOR THE EGGS.]
The murre is not good to eat. If undisturbed it lays two eggs only; when
robbed, it will keep on laying until it has produced six or even eight
eggs; and the manager of the islands told me that he had found as many as
eight eggs forming in a bird's ovaries when he killed and opened it in the
beginning of the season. The male bird regularly relieves the female on
the nest, and also watches to resist the attacks of the gull, which
not only destroys the eggs, but also eats the young. The murre feeds on
sea-grass and jelly-fish, and I was assured that though some hundreds had
been examined at different times, no fish had ever been found in a murre's
stomach.
The bird is small, about the size of a half-grown duck, but its egg is
as large as a goose egg. The egg is brown or greenish, and speckled. When
quite fresh it has no fishy taste, but when two or three days old the
fishy taste becomes perceptible. They are largely used in San Francisco by
the restaurants and bakers, and for omelets, cakes, and custards.
During the height of the egging season the gulls hover in clouds over the
rocks, and when a rookery is started, and the poor birds leave their nests
by hundreds, the air is presently alive with gulls flying off with the
eggs, and the eggers are sometimes literally drenched.
There is thus inevitably a considerable waste of eggs. I asked some of the
eggers how many murres nested on the South Farallon, and they thought at
least one hundred thousand. I do not suppose this an extravagant estimate,
for, taking the season of 1872, when seventeen thousand nine hundred and
fifty-two dozen eggs were actually sold in San Francisco, and allowing
half a dozen to each murre, this would give nearly thirty-six thousand
birds; and adding the proper number for eggs broken, destroyed by gulls,
and not gathered, the number of murres and gulls is probably over one
hundred thousand. This on an island less than a mile in its greatest
diameter, and partly occupied by the light-house and fog-whistle and their
keepers, and by other birds and a large number of sea-lions!
When they are done laying, and when the young can fly, the birds leave the
island, usually going off together. During the summer and fall they return
in clouds at intervals, but stay only a few days at a time, though there
are generally a few to be found at all times; and I am told that eggs in
small quantities can be found in the fall.
The murre does not fly high, nor is it a very active bird, or apparently
of long flight. But the eggers say that when it leaves the island they do
not know whither it goes, and they assert that it is not abundant on the
neighboring coast. The young begin to fly when they are two weeks old, and
the parents usually take them immediately into the water.
The sea-parrot has a crest, and somewhat resembles a cockatoo. Its numbers
on the South Farallon are not great. It makes a nest in a hole in the
rocks, and bites if it is disturbed. The island was first used as a
sealing station; but this was not remunerative, there being but very few
fur seal, and no sea-otters. This animal, which abounds in Alaska, and
is found occasionally on the southern coast of California, frequents
the masses of kelp which line the shore; but there is no kelp about the
Farallones.
In the early times of California, when provisions were high-priced, the
egg-gatherers sometimes got great gains. Once, in 1853, a boat absent but
three days brought in one thousand dozen, and sold the whole cargo at a
dollar a dozen; and in one season thirty thousand dozen were gathered, and
brought an average of but little less than this price.
[Illustration: THE GREAT ROOKERY.]
Of course there was an egg war. The prize was too great not to be
struggled for; and the rage of the conflicting claimants grew to such
a pitch that guns were used and lives were threatened, and at last the
Government of the United States had to interfere to keep the peace. But
with lower prices the strife ceased; the present company bought out, I
believe, all adverse claims, and for the last fifteen or sixteen years
peace has reigned in this part of the county of San Francisco--for these
lonely islets are a part of the same county with the metropolis of the
Pacific.
[Illustration: INDIAN GIRLS AND CANOE, PUGET SOUND.]