Yet every incident and scene had its poetic side to him, and, while that phase of his nature did not lead him to exaggeration in prose, it often led him to break into independent poetic effusions. He appears to have long looked upon the Pacific coast as a field of poetry and song, for, before he had any idea of visiting the country, he wrote several poems, and located them there. “The Fight of Paso del Mar” was one of those early poems, and the scene was the cliff at the entrance to the harbor at Santa Barbara. “Gusty and raw was the morning, A fog hung over the seas, And its gray skirts, rolling inland, Were torn by the mountain trees; No sound was heard but the dashing Of waves on the sandy bar, When Pablo of San Diego Bode down to the Paso del Mar. The pescadòr, out in his shallop, Gathering his harvest so wide, Sees the dim bulk of the headland Loom over the waste of the tide; He sees, like a white thread, the pathway Wind round on the terrible wall, Where the faint, moving speck of the rider Seems hovering close to its fall.” Most sweetly sang he of the climate, and the prolific gifts of nature in California, and one verse of his “Manuela” contains a very vivid and accurate picture of some of California, as seen by many travellers. “All the air is full of music, for the winter rains are o’er, And the noisy magpies chatter from the budding sycamore; Blithely frisk unnumbered squirrels, over all the grassy slope; Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps the antelope.” In a prophetic strain, which has been so often quoted in that land where “The seaward winds are wailing through Santa Barbara’s pines, And like a sheathless sabre, the far Pacific shines,” he foretold, in “The Pine Forest of Monterey,” what has already happened in that magic land of sunshine, gold, and miraculous progress. “Stately Pines, But few more years around the promontory Your chant will meet the thunders of the sea. No more, a barrier to the encroaching sand Against the surf ye’ll stretch defiant arm, Though with its onset and besieging shock Your firm knees tremble. Never more the wind Shall pipe shrill music through your mossy beards, Nor sunset’s yellow blaze athwart your heads Crown all the hills with gold. Your race is past: The mystic cycle, whose unnoted birth Coeval was with yours, has run its sands, And other footsteps from these changing shores Frighten its haunting Spirit. Men will come To vex your quiet with the din of toil; The smoky volumes of the forge will stain This pure, sweet air; loud keels will ride the sea, Dashing its glittering sapphire into foam; Through all her green cañadas Spring will seek Her lavish blooms in vain, and clasping ye, O, mournful Pines, within her glowing arms, Will weep soft rains to find ye fallen low.”