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Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff
page 247 of 346 (71%)
of life in the earlier geological ages, when monsters and chimeras dire
wallowed about our unripe planet, and brute force of muscles and lungs
ruled among the populous hordes of beasts which, fortunately for us,
have perished, leaving us only this great wild sea-beast as a faint
reminiscence of their existence. I wondered what Dante would have
thought--and what new horrors his gloomy imagination would have conjured,
could he have watched this thousand or two of sea-lions at their sports.

The small, sloping, pointed head of the creature gives it, to me, a
peculiarly horrible appearance. It seems to have no brain, and presents
an image of life with the least intelligence. It is in reality not without
wits, for one needs only to watch the two or three specimens in the great
tank at Woodward's Gardens, when they are getting fed, to see that they
instantly recognize their keeper, and understand his voice and motion.
But all their wit is applied to the basest uses. Greed for food is their
ruling passion, and the monstrous lightning-like lunges through the water,
the inarticulate shrieks of pleasure or of fury as he dashes after his
food or comes up without it, the wild, fierce eyes, the eager and brutal
vigor with which he snatches a morsel from a smaller fellow-creature, the
reliance on strength alone, and the abject and panic-struck submission
of the weaker to the stronger--all this shows him a brute of the lowest
character.

Yet there is a wonderful snake-like grace in the lithe, swift motions of
the animal when he is in the surf. You forget the savage blood-shot
eyes, the receding forehead, the clumsy figure and awkward motion, as he
wriggles up the steep rocks, the moment you see him at his superb sport in
the breakers. It seemed to me that he was another creature. The eye looks
less baleful, and even joyous; every movement discloses conscious power;
the excitement of the sport sheds from him somewhat of the brutality which
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