blue waters of the bay flashed in the sun and
riffled under the squalls. Spray dashed away from our bows. A chill
raced in from the open Pacific, diluting the sunlight.

We stared ahead of us, all eyes. The bay was a veritable inland sea; and
the shores ahead of us lay flat and wide, with blue hazy hills in the
distance, and a great mountain hovering in midair to our right. Black
cormorants going upwind flapped heavily by us just above the water,
their necks stretched out. Gulls wheeled and screamed above us, or
floated high and light like corks over the racing waves. Rafts of ducks
lay bobbing, their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. A
salt tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of the
harbour entrance the shadows of canons were beginning most beautifully
to define themselves.

Altogether it was a pleasant sail. We perched to windward, and smoked
our pipes, and worked ourselves to a high pitch of enthusiasm over what
we were going to see and do. The sailor too smoked his pipe, leaning
against the long, heavy tiller.

The distant flat shores drew nearer. We turned a corner and could make
out the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came up
on it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a very
solid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood on
his feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of the
mainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers.
In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our very
vertebrae. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolled
on her keel, the sail flopped, a following wave slopped heavily over the
stern, and the water swashed forward across our feet. Then we recovered
a trifle, staggered forward, bumped twice more, and slid into the
smoother deep water. The sailor grunted, and passed us a dipper. We
bailed her out while he raised again the peak of his sail.

Shortly after this experience we glided up the reaches of a wide
beautiful river. It had no banks, but was bordered by the tall reeds
called tules. As far as the eye could reach, and that was very far when
we climbed part way up the mast to look, these tules extended. League
after league they ran away like illimitable plains, green and brown and
beautiful, until somewhere over the curve of the earth straight ahead
they must have met distant blue hills. To the southeast there