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Show CHAPTEE VIII. WHEBE MAN ENTERS AT HIS PEELL. Beaching out one thousand miles into the Pacific ocean, elongating itself like a monstrous thing alive, in futile attempt to separate itself from its parent con tinent, there is a lonely land as unknown to the world as the vast barbaric interior of Central Africa or the re-pellant coasts of Patagonia. Upon its unhospitable shores on the west, the sea in anger resenting its intrusive pres ence, has been waring for untold ages, hurling mountain ous waves of immeasurable strength on its sandy beach or against its granite fortifications. At times the waters of the Gulf of Cortez, rising in their wrath, rush with fierce violence on its western flank, and the sound of the impact is the roaring of the sea heard far inland. In this war of the elements great wounds have been opened where the land was vulnerable, and indentations, inlets and deep bays remain to record the desperate nature of the unending battles of the primordial forces. This aw ful and vast solitude of riven mountains and parched deserts retains the name it received 350 years ago, when baptized in the blood of thirteen Spaniards slaughtered by the savages of this yet savage wilderness. This is Baija, Cal. Lower California a wild and dreary re gion, torn by torrents, barrancas and ravines, and in places, disfigured by ghastly wounds inflicted by vol canic fire or earthquake. The exterior world furnishes nothing to compare with it. Here are mountains devoid of vegetation, extraor dinary plateaus, bewildering lines of fragmentary cliffs, |