On the other hand, the Point Cabrillo light, a few miles south, whose flashing ray is of 650,000 candle-power, is picked up from a distance of only fourteen miles, because the light is but 84 feet above mean high-water. The Farallon beacon, comprising a tower 29 feet high planted on the highest point of Farallon Island, off San Francisco, comes a good second in point of elevation, as the 110,000 candle-power flash, occurring for ten seconds once in every minute, is projected from an altitude of 358 feet, and can be discerned twenty-six miles away. For many years the Point Reyes light held the distinction of being the loftiest beacon, since its flash of 160,000 candle-power once every five seconds is shed from an elevation of 294 feet, but is now relegated to third place in this respect. Taken on the whole, the lights scattered along the rugged, lonely Pacific seaboard are far more powerful than their contemporaries guarding busier shipping on the eastern coast of the country; but whereas the latter are placed somewhat close together, the former are spaced far apart. [Illustration: THE PUNTA GORDA LIGHT STATION, CALIFORNIA. One of the latest built by the United States. Commodious and handsome buildings are provided for the wardens of this light.] There are some points which, while being so extremely perilous to the mariner as to demand the provision of a lighthouse, yet cannot be guarded at present. The peculiarity of their situations and their physical characteristics completely defy the ingenuity, skill, and resource, of the engineer. Cape Hatteras, perhaps, is the most forcible illustration of this defeat of science by Nature. The sea-bed for miles off this point is littered with the most treacherous sandbanks, beside which the Goodwins of Britain appear insignificant. Every seafarer knows the Diamond Shoals, and gives them a wider berth than any other danger spot in the seven seas. For some seven and a half miles out to sea from the prominent headland, the Atlantic, according to its mood, bubbles, boils, or rolls calmly, over shoals and serried rows of submerged banks. The currents are wild and frantic; the storms which rage off this point are difficult to equal in any other part of the world; and the number of ships which have gone to pieces or have been abandoned to their fate in these inhospitable stretches of sea is incalculable.