The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-01-04

peIago OFF the California Coast-Th'
Countless Skulls and One Live Wo'
man of st. Nicholas.
An expedition of scientific students
has been made up in Los Angeles and
| Pasadena to explore thoroughly the
! channel islands off that part of the
coast of California known as Santa
| Barbara and San Buenaventura coun-
| tries during the next six months. The
party is to be sustained by Stanford
university largely and to a less extent
by several UNCONVENTIONAL colleges in
Southern California. Anthropological
and archaeological students, who have
spent several weeks each on these is
| lands, say they are one of the very
richest fields for work in that depart
ment of knowledge on the Pacific
coast. The Channel islands constitute
| California's only archipelago, with the
possible exception Of the rocky and
scanty Farallone Islands. They have
been objects of romance, legends, curl
osty and mystery for generation.
Notwithstanding all the islands are
| within eighty-two miles of California's
shore, they are solitary and unfre-
| quented, and years roll by with visits
to them of less than fifty people annu-
| ally Each island has its own particu-
| lar strange uncanny traditions of the
| tribes of red men, and each has the
| countless traces of an occupation by
| thousands and thousands of Indians
| When Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the
| Portuguese navigator, sailed up the
| coast of California in 1912, he stopped
| for a day or two at each Of the Chan
mel islands, and his records bear tesd-
| mony that on the islands of Santa Bar
barry, Catalina, Clemente and st.
Nicholas there were vigorous ana
lusty race Of natives, who thronged the
shores of the little bays and headlands'
and gazed in mute wonder at the white
sailed ship of the navigators. To-day
the islands stand as they did over three
hundred and fifty years ago, but the
natives are only memory, represented
by immense quantities of stone imple-
ments barrels OF fine wampum and
carloads of human bones.
ST. Nicholas Island lies eighty miles
Immediately opposite the little city of
San Buenaventura (recently called by
the more modern and easy name or
Ventura) and is the most interesting of
all the Channel Islands from many
points of view. AS far back as the
memory of any person in Southern Cal
ifornia runs hundreds of white skele-
tons have dotted the valleys and hill
sides. Strange utensils of serpentine
sandstone and steatite are found there
In 1,,,v,, hny md "a
land and it's erstwhile Inhabitants have
history so curious that 1t is difficult
of comprehension
In 1885 the Franciscan padres in the
Santa Barbara mission, learning that
there We're but sixteen of the strange
and almost extinct human race then liv-
ing there determined to rescue them
from the island. They went over in
sloop and succeeded, as they thought,
in getting all on board. At the last
moment an Indian woman returned
for her child, and otne of the frequent
storms of the Channel islands spring.
ing up, the sloop was driven away with
out her. The sloop went on the rocks
of Point Conception and all were lost.
Sixteen years later Captain George
NideVer and two men went from the
coast on a sloop to hunt otter off st.
Nicholas. On landing they were, like
Crusoe. astonished to discover human
footprints in the sand. They saw no
one, however, and storm compelled
them to put to sea. IT was two years
thereafter that the adventurous cap
tain, revolving in his mind the sight of
the footprints in the uncanny island
AT me- n 6iGpnUnr
bring over the lonely woman of whom
he had vaguely heard Men accompa-
MED him and al length they saw on the
surf beaten shoe a woman with long
towny hair, dressed in n queer garb of
colored bird skins and scraping with a
bone knife the fblubber from a S cal. |
They surrounded and approached her |
stealthily, and, although suddenly con-
fronted, she did not appear in the least
afraid, but smiled, and then, falling on ,
her knees, prayed to the sun. The wild |
woman offered no objection when by |
signs she was made to understand that
she was to go with them in the boat.
They reached Santa Barbara across
the rough sea, and the first thing the
Indian woman saw was a man riding
horse. She had never seen nor heard .
of any object like it, and thought the
man and horse We're one, and she knelt
on the shore and offered her devotions
to it. Two weeks afterWard the last
inhabitant of rock-rbbed, tempest
tossed ST. Nicholas died from eating
food to which she was unaccustomed
furnished by her rescuers and the cur
tain fell on her race forever. The wo-
man, known as the lone Woman Of
has been the subject of a
score of romances and poems,
st. Nicholas is ten miles long and four
miles wide at the widest point. Its to-
biography shows a nearly level plateau,
with an elevation of eight hundred to
a thousand feet. Two thirds of the
surface is covered with drifting sand,
and the remainder grows a species of
nutritious grass and moss, on which
thousand sheep find pasture. Several
springs have been discovered but their
water is slightly brackish. OF late .
years the island is rarely visited, eX-
,ept by sheep shearers and shell gath
arers, who make annual trips in schoon-
RS fishing smacks or Chinese junks.
The only safe landing ground at St
Nicholas is at Coral harbor pretty
cove formed by two sandstone arms
hrust out from the main barrier of the ]
hore The entrance is but six or seven (
ards across and the water within is as |
,lacid as lake and sufficiently deep to
loaf q vessel of twenty tons burden. i