, 1912-12-19
CALIFORNIA LETTER

shiuA IL 1 udu tu0 lol6uro L
should spend most of my time
down on the water front-there
are 30 many strange and interest
ing sights for q landsman to See
there. 1t don't matter much where
you go there is something novel
and unusual on exhibition. 1 was
down on the 8. P. freight pier the
other day, watching the strange
kinds Of fish the men and boys
were pulling out of the Bay. They
used nc rods, just a line with a
sinker on it, and any kind of meat
for bait. One man had three or
four young sharks laying on the
timbers beside him and he said he
was not fishing for sharks either.
I asked him if they we're good to
eat ? "Not for a white man." he
replied, "but Cinnamon and Cho.
loes eat them" I touched one of
them with the toe Of my shoe and
it squirmed like a lizard, although
it had been out of the water for an
hour. They look exactly like their
pictures, tho no picture can begin
to show how repulsive they are to
the sight. just a solid head shap-
ed like that Of a snake and down
under the throat, away back, is q
narrow, transverse slit, and that is
the mouth. These young ones were
from "a to Sc inches in length and
there must bs any number of them
in the Bay, for I saw several others
lying beside other fishermen. The
old shark comes into the Bay to
have their young, and it is said the
Bay lie full of them. 1 was in
formed that the sharks here are
not the man-eating kind, but I
would not like to trust myself to
the tender mercies of a full grown
one if it looked anything like the
youngsters I saw down there.
Another point in the pier some
boys were pulling out a small
bright colored fish, a little larger
than the sun-6sh we used to catch
in the creeks and small streams
back home. They looked like pol
ished aluminium and had faint
lavender and purple stripes that
gave them. a very beautiful ap.
p~earence, but they contain more
bones than a black sucker and few
care to tackle them as an article
of food.
But more facinating to me than
the fish were the strange ships,
and power boats ranged along the
piers, either taking in or discharg-
ing cargo. There was a French
ship, a large four-mssted vessel,
that had the merchant flag of that
nation flying from its flag staff.
1t bad encountered rough weather
at sea and was battered and
weather beaten to a most interest
ing extent. I stood and looked at
it and speculated on the strange
waters it had sailed over and the
sights it had seen, both of land
and sea. While l stood there a
little black tug came up and made
fast to it at one 'corner" and start
cd with it to the sea out thru the
Golden gate. The ship was big
and ponderous and the tug YVES
little and smudgy looking and they
made a strange pair as they grad
ually melted away in the distance,
the ship quiesent and the tug bois-
ferrous and fussy, belching black
smoke and emitting white clouds
of steam from it's escape pipe.
They dwindled away until the ship
looked ghostly and unreal thru
the fog and mist and the little tug
looked no bigger than a wart on
the back of a mans hand beside
its great burden. Now and then
you will see a great barge loaded
with half a dozen freight cas-,
moving mysteriously across the
Bay and you wonder where the
power is that is moving it until
loul - hlaok auaEn