In the Footprints of the Padres

of a sunny Saturday. Outside of California there never were such Saturdays as those. We were perfectly sure for eight months in the year that

ife some ra

ust be dark

son. It did not rain so very much even in the rainy season, when it had a perfect right to; therefore ther

ved numberless legs in the air-I mean the crabs, not the crabbers. We used to go crabbing ourselves when we felt like it, with a net made of a bit of mosquito-bar stretched over an iron hoop, and with a piece of meat tied securely in the middle of it. When we hauled up tho

ake curious or impertinent inquiry. We sometimes stood at the wide doorway-it was forever invitingly open, -and looked with awe and amazement at paintings richly framed and hung so close together that no bit of the wall was visible. The

through them. Not one of these cobwebs was ever molested-or had been from the beginning of time, as it seemed to us. A velvet carpet on the floor was worn smooth and almost no trace of its rich flowery pattern was left; but there were many s

of its furnishings, was never visible. The wharf in front of the house was a free menagerie. There were bears and other beasts behind prison bars, a very populous monkey cage, and the customary "hap

and it long since toppled to its fall, as all such houses must. We followed the beach, that rounded in a curve toward Black Point. Just before reaching the Point there was a sandhill of no

pon that old hulk as our private and personal property. At low tide we could board her dry-shod; at high tide we could wade out to her. We knew her intimately from stem to stern, her several decks, her cabins, lockers, holds; we had counted all her ribs over and over again, and paced her quarter-deck, and gazed up at he

me at Black

les in length. It was cased in a heavy frame; and along the timbers that crossed over it lay planks, one after another, wherever the flume was uncovered. This narrow path, intended for the convenience of the workmen who kept the flume in repair, was our delight. We followed it in the full assurance that we were running a great risk. Beneath us was the open trough, where the water, two or three

And what sea-treasure lay strewn there! Mollusks, not so delicate or so decorative as the shells we had brought with us from the Southern Seas, but still delightful. Such starfish and cloudy, starch-like jelly-fish, and all the livelier creeping and crawling creatures that populate the shore

hen we built fires of drift-wood to warn the passing ships that we were castaways on a desert island; b

lions can be seen at home, sporting in their native element, and at liberty to come and go in the wide Pacific at their own sweet wi

hat girdle them and sport like the fabled monsters of marine mythology. Seal, sea-leopard, or sea-lion-whatever they may be-they cry with one voice night and day; and it is not a pleasant cry either, though a far one, they mouth so horribly. Long ago it inspired a wit to madness and he made a joke; the same old joke has been made by those who followed afte

almost interminable succession of sand-dunes. There was neither track nor trail there; there was

t a fountain

aste there st

in the soli

s to my spi

our desert, thick-leaved and juicy; and these were doing their best to keep from getting buried alive. The sand was always shifting out yonder, and there was a square mile or two of it. We could easily have been lost in it but for our two everlasting landmarks-Mount Tamalpais across the water to the north, and in the south Lone Mountain. Lone

lpable snow; it chilled us and it thrilled us, for there was danger of our going quite astray in it; but by and by we got into the edge of the town, and what a very ragged edge it was in the dim long ago! Once in the edge of the town, we were maste