Page:A La California.djvu/89

Rh ladies and children, in the summer season. Two ledges of sharp, jagged rocks jut out into the ocean about two hundred and fifty yards apart. Between them extends a sandstone bluff some thirty feet in height, in front of which stretches the beach some twenty to fifty feet in width at high or low tide. The beach is composed wholly of pebbles, from the size of a grain of wheat to that of a good-sized walnut. They are of all colors—white, red, brown, yellow, green, and variegated. Those of a beautiful opaline hue are most plentiful, and all are highly polished by attrition. Plain agates, moss-agates, cornelians and greenstones abound; and it is claimed that the more precious stones, including diamonds and rubies, are sometimes met with. The wife of Francisco Garcia, a well-known saloon-keeper on Montgomery Street, in San Francisco, has a genuine diamond which she found here, but I am not certain that it was placed there by purely natural agencies Hundreds of tons of the pebbles are washed up by every storm, and it is supposed that there is a layer or stratum of soft rock or clay in which they are imbedded, extending out into the sea from beneath the sandstone. Every day, in summer, many ladies and children go down to this beach pebble-hunting, carrying their lunch-baskets with them. They lie down at full length upon their faces on the drifts of polished pebbles, and with a stick dig down into the mass in search of special beauties. A quart of fine ones is a good day's work, and a lady of unusually fastidious taste will frequently work all day for a cupfull. Collections of these pebbles may be seen