It is rock-bound, and the rock seems to be of varying hardness, so that the ocean, trying every square inch every minute of the day for thousands of years, has eaten out the softer parts, and worked out the strangest caverns and passages.

You scarcely see a headland or projecting point through which the sea has not forced a passage, whose top exceeds a little the mark of high tide; and there are caves innumerable, some with extensive ramifications.

I was shown one such cave at Mendocino City, into which a schooner, drifting from her anchors, was sucked during a heavy sea.

As she broke from her anchors the men hoisted sail, and the vessel was borne into the cave with all sail set.

Her masts were snapped off like pipe-stems, and the hull was jammed into the great hole in the rock, where it began to thump with the swell so vehemently that two of the frightened crew were at once crushed on the deck by the overhanging ceiling of the cave.