2-752-699 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Coast of Mendocino', 1872. Rock arch on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, California, USA. 'Nothing can be more tumultuous or less pacific than the waters of the Pacific Ocean along the Mendocino coast...the waves are twelve feet high and a mile in length, and advance with a solemnity of motion which words cannot describe...the boiling fury with which they crash upon the beach and churn the sands is, at first sight, appalling. Around such isolated rocks as those presented by the artist they rage and raven...they have worn the cliffs into strange and wondrous forms, beating out caverns where the lower part is conglomerate rock, and series of arched cellars, into which tuns of sea-weed and debris are thrown...they have invariably scooped out the soft rock, making all kinds of mystic arches, siren rings, and gateways of Poseidon'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]