At the seal rocks we tarried long; for there are few spots within the reach of the usual sight-seer where an enormous family of sea-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 wills. There they had lived for numberless generations unmolested; there they still live, for they are under the protection of the law.
The famous Cliff House is built upon the cliff above them, and above it is a garden bristling with statues. Thousands upon thousands of curious idlers stare the sea-folks out of countenance—or try to; but they, the sons of the salt sea and the daughters of the deep, climb into the crevices of the rocks to sun themselves, unheeding; or leap into the waves that 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 after him. It will continue to be made with impertinent impunity until the sea gives up its seals; for the temptation is there daily and hourly, and the humorist is but human—he can not long resist it; so he will buttonhole you on the veranda of the Cliff House and whisper in your astonished ear as if he were imparting a state secret: "Their bark is on the sea!"
The way home was sometimes a weary one. After leaving the bluff above the shore, we struck into an almost interminable succession of sand-dunes. There was neither track nor trail there; there was no oasis to gladden us with its vision of beauty. The pale poet of destiny and despair has written:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree;
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
There was no fountain in our desert, and we knew it well enough; for we had often braved its sands. In that wide waste there was not even the solitary tree that moved the poet to song; nor a bird in our solitude, save a sea-gull cutting across-lots from the ocean to the bay in search of a dinner. There were some straggling vines on the edge of 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 Mountain was our Calvary—a green hill that loomed above the graves where slept so many who were dear to us. The cross upon its summit we had often visited in our holiday pilgrimages. They were holydays, when our childish feet toiled hopefully up that steep height; for that cross was the beacon that lighted the world-weary to everlasting rest.
And so we crossed the desert, over our shoetops in sand; climbing one hill after another, only to slide or glide or ride down the yielding slope on the farther side. Meanwhile the fog came in like a wet blanket. It swathed all the landscape in impalpable 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 masters of the situation: you couldn't lose us even in the dark. And so ended the outing of our merry crew,—merry though weary and worn; yet not so worn and weary but we could raise at parting a glad "Hoorah for Health, Happiness, and the Hills of Home!"