trade winds, baked by the unclouded six months' sun, lost for a few
hours in the afternoon sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots
from the Farallones. It was kept by a recluse--a preoccupied man of
scientific tastes, who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants,
had applied to the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a
means of securing the seclusion he valued more than gold. Some believed
that he was the victim of an early disappointment in love--a view
charitably taken by those who also believed that the government would
not have appointed "a crank" to a position of responsibility. Howbeit,
he fulfilled his duties, and, with the assistance of an Indian, even
cultivated a small patch of ground beside the lighthouse. His isolation
was complete! There was little to attract wanderers here: the nearest
mines were fifty miles away; the virgin forest on the mountains inland
were penetrated only by sawmills and woodmen from the Bay settlements,
equally remote. Although by the shore-line the lights of the great port
were sometimes plainly visible, yet the solitude around him was
peopled only by Indians,--a branch of the great northern tribe of
"root-diggers,"--peaceful and simple in their habits, as yet
undisturbed by the white man, nor stirred into antagonism by aggression.
Civilization only touched him at stated intervals, and then by the more
expeditious sea from the government boat that brought him supplies. But
for his contiguity to the perpetual turmoil of wind and sea, he might
have passed a restful Arcadian life in his surroundings; for even his
solitude was sometimes haunted by this faint reminder of the great port
hard by that pulsated with an equal unrest. Nevertheless, the sands
before his door and the rocks behind him seemed to have been untrodden
by any other white man's foot since their upheaval from the ocean. It
was true that the little bay beside him was marked on the map as "Sir
Francis Drake's Bay," tradition having located it as the spot where
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