2-752-705 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Seal Rocks', 1872. Rocky coast on the Pacific Ocean, California, USA:...'the cliffs where the sea-lions congregate. Truly, their bark is worse than their bite. They occasionally get up a little altercation, and roar tremendously; but they are a placable people, and their contests are not alarming...The seals seem to appreciate their perfect security, and congregate in hundreds on these cliffs. The females suckle their young ones, and the males catch fish and sun themselves, as if they were in the middle of the ocean, where no eye of cruel man could see their glistening skins, and begin to calculate what they would fetch in the New-York market'. 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]