As We Skirted Along The Coast, Wilson And I Recognized, Or Thought
We Did, In The Clear Moonlight, The Rude
White Mission of San Juan
Capistrano, and its cliff, from which I had swung down by a pair of
halyards
To save a few hides, - a boy who could not be prudential,
and who caught at every chance for adventure.
As we made the high point off San Diego, Point Loma, we were
greeted by the cheering presence of a light-house. As we swept
round it in the early morning, there, before us, lay the little
harbor of San Diego, its low spit of sand, where the water runs
so deep; the opposite flats, where the Alert grounded in starting
for home; the low hills, without trees, and almost without brush;
the quiet little beach; - but the chief objects, the hide houses,
my eye looked for in vain. They were gone, all, and left no mark
behind.
I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the
town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself.
The recollections and the emotions all were sad, and only sad.
Fugit, interea fugit irreparabile tempus.
The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal,
unnatural, repellant. I saw the big ships lying in the stream,
the Alert, the California, the Rosa, with her Italians; then the
handsome Ayacucho, my favorite; the poor, dear old Pilgrim, the
home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro;
the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled
beach; the large hide-houses with their gangs of men; and the
Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! not a
vestige to mark where one hide-house stood. The oven, too,
was gone. I searched for its site, and found, where I thought
it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone
was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to
me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them, - poor
Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws
and beach-combers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to
transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had
they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens
of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from
the wreck, -
"When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."
The light-hearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the
seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's
life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed
themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them.
Even the animals are gone, - the colony of dogs, the broods of
poultry, the useful horses; but the coyotes bark still in the
woods, for they belong not to man, and are not touched by his
changes.
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