Now is our chance. Jump on to that rock before the next wave comes in, and climb on to the reef beyond it and get out to low-water mark. Here we are. Do you see that crevice? Chip in and wrench the piece off; the rock is soft enough sandstone to cut with that blunt old axe. Here is the spoil--soft mollusks, are they not, and not pretty to look at? But wait for the soup at dinner to-morrow before you pronounce on them. And we dig, and then venture farther out and farther, till the turn of the water warns us to get back. The evening is closing in; the sun has set, leaving a hot, red glow, where his copper disk has just sunk beyond the Pacific horizon; and the eye wanders out from the infant waves, at foot just tinged with red, and reflecting the light as they move up in turn to catch it, to the blue and still darker blue water beyond, out to the sharp indigo line where sky and water meet. No land between us and the Eastern world; the mind can hardly grasp the idea of the vast stretch of sea across which this new world reaches forth to join hands with old China and Japan. [Sidenote: _SEA-OTTERS._] Before we go to bed, step for a moment into the quaint general store all but adjoining the hotel. What a medley! Flour and axes; bacon and needles and thread; fishing-lines and bullock-hides; writing-paper and beaver-traps; milk-pails and castor-oil; tobacco in plenty, and skins; and a smell compounded of all these and more, but chiefly the product of that batch of skins hanging from that big nail in front of you, and lying piled on the bench by your side. Take them down, and turn them over; Bush won't mind. And we shake hands with the proprietor, coming from the darkness at the back. He has borne an honorable limp ever since the war, and has never yet quite recovered from illness and wounds. He swears by Newport as the best, and healthiest, and most promising place in the world. "Say," he whispers in our ear, "got a sea-otter skin to-day!" "Where did you get it, Bush, and who from, and how much did you have to pay for it?" "Got it from the Indians," he says; "they shot it away up by Salmon River, beyond Foulweather, and had to give more dollars for it than I care to say." "Where did they get it?" "Where they always do, away out in the kelp among the surf." "Don't they ever come to land?" "No," he answers, "they live, and sleep, and breed out in the kelp. But if you want to know all about them, why don't you ask Charlie here? He has been trading this summer, and last winter and spring, up by Gray's Inlet in Washington Territory, where they are plenty." So saying, he calls up the captain of the steam-schooner lying at her moorings by the quay.