A towering mass of gray rocks had
been cut and lashed by wind and water, earthquake and fire, into the
semblance of a massive castle, still warlike in its ruin. He slept for a
few hours that night in the Mission of Santa Ynes, and was high in the
Santa Barbara Mountains at the next noon. For brief whiles he forgot
his journey's purpose as his horse climbed slowly up the steep trails,
knocking the loose stones down a thousand feet and more upon a roof of
tree-tops which looked like stunted brush. Those gigantic masses of
immense stones, each wearing a semblance to the face of man or beast;
those awful chasms and stupendous heights, densely wooded, bare, and
many-hued, rising above, beyond, peak upon peak, cutting through the
visible atmosphere--was there no end? He turned in his saddle and looked
over low peaks and canons, rivers and abysms, black peaks smiting the
fiery blue, far, far, to the dim azure mountains on the horizon.
"Mother of God!" he thought. "No wonder California still shakes! I would
I could have stood upon a star and beheld the awful throes of this
country's birth.
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