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Page 28
[Illustration: The Work and the Worker, Santa Cruz, Cal.]
When the awful blows of the sea smite the rock, if it finds a place
less hard than others, it wears into it a slight depression, after half
a hundred thousand strokes, more or less, and ever after, as the years
go by, it drives its wedges home in that place. A shallow cave
results. Then the waters converge on the sides of the cave and meet
with awful force in the middle. Thus a tunnel is excavated, like a
drift in a mine, each wave making the tremendous charge and the
reflowing surges bringing away all the detritus. This tunnel may be
driven or excavated two hundred feet inland, under the shore. At each
inrush of the wave the air is terribly condensed before it. It seeks
outlet. And so it happens that the air is driven up through some crack
in the rock and the superincumbent earth, one or two hundred feet from
the shore, and a great hole appears in the ground from twenty to
seventy feet deep. Then the water spouts fiercely up and returning
carries back the earth and broken rock into the sea.
No. 3 of the illustrations here given represents such a great
excavation one hundred feet back from the shore. It is one hundred and
fifty feet long by ninety wide and over fifty feet deep. All the
material had been carried out to sea by the refluent wave. On the
natural bridge seen in front the great crowd in Broadway, New York,
might pass or a troop of cavalry could be maneuvered. Through the arch
a ship with masts thirty feet high might enter at high tide. Through
the abutment of the arch where the afternoon sun pours its brightness
the waves have cut other arches not visible in the picture. When the
arches become too many or too wide the natural bridge will fall and be
carried out to sea like many another.
[Illustration: A Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz, Cal.]
But what does the sea do with the harder parts of the cliff? Its waves
wear away the rock on each side and leave one or more long fingers
reaching out into the sea. The wear and tear on such a projection is
immense. A strong swimmer may play with the breakers away from the
cliff. At exactly the right moment he may dive headlong through the
pearly green Niagara that has not yet fallen quite to his head and may
sport in the comparatively quiet water beyond, while the wild ruin
falls with a sound of thunder on the beach. But let him once be caught
and dashed against the rocks and there is no more life or wholeness of
bones within him.
In the swirl of converging currents between two rocky projections, as
the coarse sand and gravel is surged around a few hundred thousand
times, there is a great tendency to wear through the wall of the
projecting finger. It is often done. Illustration No. 4 shows at low
tide such a projection cut through. Since the picture was taken the
bridge has fallen, the detritus been carted away by the waves, and the
pier stands lonely in the sea.
[Illustration: An Excavated Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]
No. 5 shows one bridge exceedingly frail and another more substantial
nearer the famous Cliff Drive. I go to the frail one every year with
anxiety lest I shall find it has been carried away. How I wish I could
show my readers the delicate sculpture and carving further back, nearer
yet to the drive. But note the various strata, the rocks worn to a
point as even the milder waves run over them; note the cracks that tell
of the awful push and stress of the titanic struggle.
[Illustration: A Double Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]
Illustration No. 6 shows three such under-hewn arches. The long
projection of rock is so curved as to prevent the arches being fully
seen in any one view. I have waded and swam through these rocky
vistas, and there, where any more than moderate waves would have
mangled me against the tusks of the cruel rocks, I have found little
specimens of aquatic life by the millions, clinging fast to the rocks
that were home to them and protecting themselves by taking lime out of
the water and building such a solid wall of shell that no fierceness of
the wildest storm could work them harm. All these seek their food from
Him who feeds all life, and he heaves the ocean up to their mouths that
they may drink.
[Illustration: A Triple Natural Arch, Santa Cruz, Cal.]
No. 7 shows what has been a quadruple arch, only one part of which is
still standing. Out in the sea, lonely and by itself, appears a pier,
scarcely emergent from the waves, which once supported an arch parallel
to the one now standing and also one at right angles to the shore. The
one now standing makes the fourth. But the ever-working sea carves and
carries away arch and shore alike. At some points a careful and even
admiring observer sees little change for years, but the remorseless
tooth gnaws on unceasingly.
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