Pacific Coast

“ Throughout the long line of the Aleutian Islands and the neighbouring coasts of North America, for over a century, hunters' boats—little cockle-shell skiffs made of oiled walrus-skin stretched on whalebone frames, narrow as a canoe, light as cork—rode the wildest seas in the wildest storms in pursuit of the sea-otter. Sea-otter became to the Pacific coast what beaver was to the Atlantic—the magnet that drew traders to the north-west seas, and ultimately led to the settlement of the north-west coast. ”

“ But it isn’t the standing on cherry-tree ladders, or the doing of any actual thing, that makes the essential difference between the people of the Atlantic and the Pacific Coast. It is the land itself, perhaps—the sunshine, the climate, that pours a rejuvenating radiance upon the spirit of resident and visitor alike. ”

“ For when it comes right down to the truly important things of life, like fly-fishing, mountaineering, and canoeing, the Pacific Coast is a region of unsurpassed satisfaction. Out-of-doors is always on tap, and when the hackneyed call of the red gods comes, it is easily answered.
A trailside dip in a mountain lake
"Sliding down snow-fields is fun, though chilly"
Adventures in contentment truly—the utter content of simplicity and isolation. Also, ventures in optimism, for where the trails wind mountainward there is just one place for the pessimist, and that is at home. ”

“ If it is only a few hours away, so much the better. Within less than one day’s drive from most points on the Pacific Coast you can lose yourself in a paradise of forests, lakes and mountains, or stand on the ocean shore and hear the breakers boom. ”

“ On the coast and in the rich valleys stand the giant pines and cedars, compared with which the trees of the Eastern division seem mere saplings. The coast is very mountainous and broken into innumerable inlets and islands, all of them heavily timbered to the water's edge. The history of this region offers little of picturesque interest except what may be found in the adventures of daring sailors of various nationalities on the Pacific coast, or in the story of the descent of the Fraser by the Scotch fur-trader who first followed it to the sea, and gave it the name which it still justly bears. ”

“ CHAPTER V ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST IN COLOMBIA, ECUADOR AND PERU
An enormous horizon opens to the traveller who essays the voyage along the Pacific coast of South America, from Panama perhaps to the extremity of the continent; a voyage through every range of climate, from the Equator to the frigid south, past verdant tropic shores or barren desert, or beneath eternal snowfields; a voyage redolent of the early heroic history of the New World, with, to-day, a setting of the picturesque modern life of the old viceregal, one-time colonies of Spain. ”

“ The two sides of our great sprawling continent, the East and West, differ from each other almost as much as day differs from night. On the coast of southern California the dominant impression made upon one is of a world made up of three elements—sun, sea, and sky. The Pacific stretches away to the horizon like a vast, shining, gently undulating floor. Its waves are longer and come in more languidly than they do upon the Atlantic coast. ”

“ Much has been written concerning the flowers, hills and climate of California, but at this time, when the world is looking toward our coast, would that more writers would reveal the thoughts that have been inspired in their minds by the sight of our great Western sea.
The prose-poem itself is a denial of the thought that the Pacific is a monotonous calm—an appreciation both of its storms and serenity written after several visits to the beach in which both moods were displayed. ”

“ Fewer and still fewer of her people return East, to spend their hard-earned fortunes; and the generation now growing up there regard the Coast as their natural home, and love it dearly. Proud of the soil and enamored of the climate, they expect great things of the future, and surely all the world should wish them well. There are no better or braver men, than our citizens there generally, and the Pacific slope is safe in their hands and brains, beyond peradventure. ”

“ The Pacific Coast has a climate like home, only better. For the main part, ye're away from the long winters;—it's a new country;—a young man's country:—it's wild and free:—and,—it's about as far away as ye can get from—from,—the trouble ye're leavin' behind. ”

“ The Pacific licks all other oceans out of hand; there is no place but the Pacific Coast to hear eternal roaring surf. When I get to the top of the woods behind Monterey, I can hear the seas breaking all round over ten or twelve miles of coast from near Carmel on my left, out to Point Pinas in front, and away to the right along the sands of Monterey to Castroville and the mouth of the Salinas. ”

“ Next morning, an hour after sunrise, through the blaze of light striking the Pacific across the far-off Californlan coast, San Juan showed like a flake of spar on the horizon to southward.
The sea all there is of an impossible blueness, the Pacific blue deepened by the Kuro Shiwo current, that mysterious river of the sea which floods up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific towards Alaska, and sweeps down the West American seaboard to fan out and lose itself away down somewhere off Chile. ”

“ As we advance, the road comes out upon the sea, for we have crossed the peninsula which divides the Bay of Yedo from the Pacific, and are now on the shores of the ocean itself. How beautiful it seemed that day! It was the last of May, and the atmosphere was full of the warmth of early summer. The coast is broken by headlands shooting out into the deep, which enclose bays, where the soft, warm sunshine lingers as on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the waters of the mighty Pacific come gently rippling up the beach. ”

“ We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium box on the edge of the world, and watch the [Pg 7] ever-varying splendor. At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft hardly exist. ”

“ A glance at a map of North America must impress one with the belief that the Pacific coast with its great extent of harbourless water-front is far less favourable to the growth or ideas, institutions, and industries than the deeply indented Atlantic shore-line. From the Isthmus of Panama to the State of Washington there is, as we have seen, but one harbour of the first class, the estuary of the Sacramento, and one of the second or third class, the estuary of the Columbia. From Puget Sound northward harbours are numberless. ”

“ The Pacific coast has a higher temperature and less rainfall than the Gulf coast. However, there is a stretch of land extending north of Acapulco along the coast and from eight to thirty miles wide that is unrivalled for tropical beauty and productiveness. There are many rivers and streams that traverse this land on the way from the great mountains to the Pacific.
There is a charm about the life in the hotlands that is missing in other parts of Mexico. Of all the inhabitants of that country, the life of the people in the hot country is the most interesting. ”

“ So much for the whistle-echo and its effect on at least one man's destiny.
Generally speaking, the conditions on the Pacific coast have many advantages for those who follow the sea. Navigation here is not so hazardous as in numerous places in the same latitude along the Atlantic coast. Owing to small rise of the tide on the Pacific coast and freedom from ice, passengers and cargo can be handled at all ports night and day throughout the year. ”

“ The North Pacific coast is the most anomalous of the North American areas, and its history is in many ways unique. It is nearer in miles to the Southwest and Mexico than is the Northeast, yet agriculture and pottery never reached it. At the same time the Northwest culture is obviously more than a marginal [388] one. ”

“ The Pacific Coast Transition life-zone comprises the region between the Cascade and Coast ranges in Washington and Oregon, parts of northern California, and most of the California coast region from Cape Mendocino to Santa Barbara. ”

“ No man is better informed of the condition and natural resources on the Pacific coast than Editor John Blaauw. He has traveled in every county from British Columbia to the Golden State. He has made Tacoma Tidende an honor to the coast and a valuable source of information to thousands of people throughout the United States. He is of a genial disposition, kind and serviceable. ”

“ There is a marked difference between the people who came to the Pacific coast by sea and those who crossed the continent, that is not accounted for by the fact that one class came from the Atlantic seaboard, and the other from the western frontier ”

“ It will be borne in mind that some of the explorations along the Pacific Coast were stimulated by stories recited by Indians who had visited various parts of the country, then unknown to white people. There were Indians in the Mississippi valley who had visited the Pacific coast and related their adventures to seamen, missionaries and others who published accounts of these adventures in Europe and America. ”

“ The coasts of America and Australia bordering on the Pacific are generally mountainous, though the shores of Alaska are low and swampy, and the southern part of South America is broken with bays and islands. The Gulfs of California, Panama and Guayaquil are the most important gulfs of the Pacific on its American coast. The coasts of Asia are low and fertile, with many gulfs, bays and groups of islands. Bering, Okhotsk, Japan, Yellow and China Seas are formed by the peninsulas and islands on the Asiatic coast. ”

“ Due partly to its relatively late settlement, the State has not been one of those which have contributed heavily to its neighbors. Its greatest outflow has been to the Pacific Coast, as its inhabitants became prosperous enough to move to a milder climate in their old age. ”

“ To a detached rock below the headland English seamen have given the name Dungeness. In the failing light, I could see that the coast westward from Cape Virgenes rises into hills, which appeared to be bare of forest. I should guess their height not to exceed two thousand feet, if it even reaches that limit.
It was almost quite dark when we finally re-entered the Atlantic, and found its waters in a very gentle mood. In these latitudes the name Pacific is not well applied to any part of that which the older navigators more fittingly designated the Southern Ocean. ”

“ I would not mention these things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country. ”

“ Had the sage been as stout and hard as other shrubbery of the same size we should have been compelled to cut our wagonway through it, and could never have passed over it as we did, crushing it beneath the feet of our oxen and the wheels of our wagons.
The geographical features of the Pacific Coast are Asiatic in their appearance, being composed of mountains and valleys. Our hills swell to mountains, and our valleys are to the eye a dead level, yet they generally descend about nine or ten feet to the mile. ”

“ If the current theory of the structural unity of the Pacific ocean be correct, then that ocean must be bounded on the south by a coast of the 'Pacific type.' With one exception in Central America the whole of the known coasts of the Pacific belong to what Suess has called the 'Pacific type.' The main character of this form of coast is that the trend is determined by mountain ranges running parallel to the shore. ”

“ France and England had acquired most of the North American continent. Spain and Portugal claimed South America; and Spain had actually warned the rest of the world that the Pacific was 'a closed sea.' But there were legends of a vast domain yet undiscovered. Juan de Fuca, a Greek pilot, employed, as alleged, by Spanish explorers between 1587 and 1592, was reported to have told of a passage from the Pacific to the Arctic through a mountainous forested land up in the region of what is now British Columbia. ”

“ It is hard to choose where all are excellent. I asked myself again and again, which line will afford the greatest entertainment and be most advantageous in the study of the country from a historic standpoint? The Canadian Pacific route, and also the Northern Pacific, with their grand mountainous scenery and other attractions, had much to commend them ”

“ Immediately on the coast of the mighty Pacific, with bays and rivers traversing our rich and fertile plains, affording the greatest facilities to commerce, and must, with the intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Saxons, in a short time, become one of the greatest commercial countries on the Pacific. ”

“ It is very remarkable, that, while the Atlantic coast abounds in excellent harbors, on the Pacific side of the continent there is no good harbor where a vessel can find refuge in any kind of weather between San Francisco Bay and San Diego to the south, and Port Angeles, on the Straits of Fuca, to the north. ”

“ The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare. ”

“ Very different is the view when the gaze is turned eastward along the far-winding bays and promontories of the Gulf of Panama. There the coast is for a long space flat, and a plain runs back toward distant hills. Beyond this plain other ranges rise to the southeast, bordering the Pacific till they sink below the horizon opposite the Pearl Islands. ”