But Captain Wilson tells me that the climate has altered; that
the southeasters are no longer the bane of the coast they once were,
and that vessels now anchor inside the kelp at Santa Barbara and San
Pedro all the year round. I should have thought this owing to his
spending his winters on a rancho instead of the deck of the
Ayacucho, had not the same thing been told me by others.
Passing round Point Conception, and steering easterly, we opened the
islands that form, with the main-land, the canal of Santa Barbara.
There they are, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa; and there is the
beautiful point, Santa Buenaventura; and there lies Santa Barbara on
its plain, with its amphitheatre of high hills and distant
mountains. There is the old white Mission with its belfries, and there
the town, with its one-story adobe houses, with here and there a
two-story wooden house of later build; yet little is it altered;- the
same repose in the golden sunlight and glorious climate, sheltered
by its hills; and then, more remindful than anything else, there roars
and tumbles upon the beach the same grand surf of the great Pacific as
on the beautiful day when the Pilgrim, after her five months'
voyage, dropped her weary anchors here; the same bright blue ocean,
and the surf making just the same monotonous, melancholy roar, and the
same dreamy town, and gleaming white Mission, as when we beached our
boats for the first time, riding over the breakers with shouting
Kanakas, the three small hide-traders lying at anchor in the offing.
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