rocky coasts. There are several on the Mendocino coast, and a number on
the shores of the Sandwich Islands. This one, however, has been utilized
by the ingenuity of man. The mouth-piece of the trumpet or fog-whistle is
fixed against the aperture in the rock, and the breaker, dashing in with
venomous spite, or the huge bulging wave which would dash a ship to pieces
and drown her crew in a single effort, now blows the fog-whistle and warns
the mariner off. The sound thus produced has been heard at a distance of
seven or eight miles. It has a peculiar effect, because it has no regular
period; depending upon the irregular coming in of the waves, and upon
their similarly irregular force, it is blown somewhat as an idle boy would
blow his penny trumpet. It ceases entirely for an hour and a half at low
water, when the mouth of the cave or passage is exposed.

[Illustration: LIGHT-HOUSE ON THE SOUTH FARALLON.]


[Illustration: ARCH AT WEST END, FARALLON ISLANDS.]

The life of the keepers of the Farallon light is singularly lonely and
monotonous. Their house is built somewhat under the shelter of the rocks,
but they live in what to a landsman would seem a perpetual storm; the
ocean roars in their ears day and night; the boom of the surf is their
constant and only music; the wild scream of the sea-birds, the howl of
the sea-lions, the whistle and shriek of the gale, the dull, threatening
thunder of the vast breakers, are the dreary and desolate sounds which
lull them to sleep at night, and assail their ears when they awake. In the
winter months even their supply vessel, which, for the most part, is their
only connection with the world, is sometimes unable to make a landing for
weeks at a time. Chance visitors they see only occasionally, and at that
distance at which a steamer is safe from the surf, and at which a girl