previous next
[2] a sandy beach. A cry of gulls and cormorants, rising from a rock below the cliff, is answered by a yell of sea-lions, fighting for their mates; but these mysterious voices from the depths of nature seem to feed the silence, and make the solitude complete.

Rein up, and scan the scene; a dip in the Pacific coast, between the heights of Monte Toro and the Pinal Grande; a scene to soothe the eye with physical beauty and surprise the ear with sacred and familiar names.

A spur runs out from the sierra towards the ocean, covered with pines and oaks, until the ridge breaks over the waters in a frown of rocks. Some Spanish pilgrim called that spur Carmelo Range, the sheltered nook below the bluff Carmelo Bay. The peak in front of Final Grande is Monte Carmelo, and the foremost headland on the coast Carmelo Point.

North of this sacred spur, but running side by side, a tamer spur drops down from Monte Toro; falling with a gentler slope and clothed in softer woods; a spur on which laurel and madrone take the place of pine and oak.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: