The Log from the Sea of Cortez (33 page)

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Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro

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24
APRIL 3
We sailed around the northern tip of Guardian Angel and down its eastern coast. The water was clear and blue, and a large swell flowed past us. About noon we moved through a great group of Zeppelin-shaped jellyfish, ctenophores or possibly siphonophores. They were six to ten inches long, and the sea was littered with them. We slowed down and tried to scoop them up, but the tension of their bodies was not sufficient to hold them together out of water. They broke up and slithered in pieces through the dip-nets. Soon after, a school of whales went by, one of them so close that the spray from his blow-hole came over our deck. There is nothing so evil-smelling as a whale anyway, and a whale’s breath is frightfully sickening. It smells of complete decay. Perhaps the droplets were left on the boat, for it seemed to us that we could smell him for a long time after he had gone by. The great schools of tuna, so evident in the Lower Gulf, were not seen here, but a few seals lazed through the water, and on one or two occasions we nearly ran over one asleep on the surface. We felt deeply the loneliness of this sea; no ships, no boats, no canoes, no little ranches on the shore nor villages. Now we would have welcomed a fishing Indian to come aboard and eat canned fruit salad, but this is a deserted sea.
The queer shoulder of Tiburón showed to the southeast of us, and we ran down on it with the wind behind us and probably the tidal current too, for we made great speed. We went down the western coast of Tiburón and watched its high cliffs through the glasses. The cliffs are fairly sheer, and the mountains are higher than those on Guardian Angel Island. This is the island where the Seri Indians come during parts of the year. It is said of them that they are or have been cannibals, a story which has been firmly denied again and again. It is certain that they have killed many strangers, but whether or not they have eaten them does not seem to be documented. Cannibalism is a fascinating subject to most people, and in some way a sin. Possibly the deep feeling is that if people learn to eat one another the food supply would be so generous and so available that no one would be either safe or hungry. It is very curious the amount of hatred and fear that cannibalism inspires. These poor Seri Indians would not be so much feared for their murdering habits, but if in their hunger they should cut a steak from an American citizen a panic arises. Swift’s quite reasonable suggestion concerning a possible use for Irish babies aroused a storm of emotionalism out of all proportion to its feasibility. There were not, it is thought, enough well-conditioned babies at that time to have provided anything like an adequate food supply. Swift without a doubt meant it only as an experiment. If it had been successful, there would have been time enough then to think of raising more babies. It has generally been found that starvation is the greatest single cause for cannibalism. In other words, people will not eat each other if they can get anything else. To some extent this reluctance must be caused by an unpleasant taste in human flesh, the result no doubt of our rather filthy eating habits. This need not be a future deterrent, for, if other barriers are removed, such as a natural distaste for eating relatives, or a man’s gallant dislike for eating women, who in turn are inhibited by a romantic tendency—if all these difficulties should be solved it would be easy enough to improve the flavor of human flesh by special diets before slaughter and carefully prepared sauces and condiments afterwards. If this should occur, the Seri Indians, if indeed they do be cannibals, far from being loaded with our hatred, must be considered pioneers in a new field and honored as such.
Clavigero, in his
History of
[Lower]
California,
76
has an account of these Seris.
 
 
 
The vessel,
San Javier
[he says], which had left Loreto in September 1709 with three thousand
scudi
to buy provisions in Yaqui, was carried 180 miles above the port of its destination by a furious storm and grounded on the sand. Some of the people were drowned; the rest saved themselves in the small boat; but after landing they were exposed to another not less serious danger because that coast was inhabited by the Series who were warlike gentiles and implacable enemies of the Spaniards. For this reason they hastened to bury the money and all the possessions which were on the boat; and after embarking again in the small boat they continued with a thousand dangers and hardships to Yaqui, from where they sent the news to Loreto. In a little while the Series came to the place where the Spaniards had buried those possessions, and they dug them up and carried them away. They even removed the rudder from the vessel and they destroyed it in order to get the nails.
As soon as Father Salvatierra learned of that misfortune, he left in the unseaworthy vessel, the
Rosario,
and went to the port of Guaymas. From there he sent this vessel to the place where the
San Javier
was grounded, and he himself went with fourteen Yaqui Indians in that direction over a very bad road which absolutely lacked potable water, and for this reason they suffered great thirst for two days. During the two months which he lived there, exposed to hunger and hardships and to the great danger of all their lives (while the vessel was being repaired), he won the good-will of the Series in such manner that he not only recovered all the cargo of the boat which they had stolen but induced them also to make peace with the Pimas, who were Christian neighbors of theirs and enemies whom they most hated. He baptized many of their children, he catechized the adults and inspired so much affection in them for Christianity that they immediately wanted a missionary to instruct them regularly and to baptize them and govern them in all respects.
So the dominating sweetness of the character of Father Salvatierra, aided by the grace of the Master, triumphed over the ferocity of those barbarians who were so feared, not only by the other Indians, but also by the Spaniards. He wept tenderly on seeing their unexpected docility and their good inclinations, thanking God for having had that much good come from the misfortune of the vessel.
 
 
The “dominating sweetness” of the character of Father Salvatierra did not, however, change them completely, for they have gone right on killing people until recently. In this account it is also interesting to notice Clavigero’s statement that Father Salvatierra took the “unseaworthy”
Rosario.
In the long record of wrecks blowing off course, of marine disaster of every kind, it was wonderful how they were able to judge whether or not a ship was unseaworthy. A little reading of contemporary records of voyaging by these priestly and soldierly navigators indicates that they put more faith in prayer than in the compass. We think the present-day navigators of the Gulf have learned their seamanship in the same school. Some of the ships we saw at Guaymas and La Paz floated in violation of every law of physics. There must be in Heaven a small pilot-house where a worried and distraught St. Christopher spends a good deal of his time looking after the shipping of the Gulf of California with a handful of miracles.
Tiburón looked red to us, and the brush seemed stronger and greener than any we had seen in a long time. In some of the creases between the hills there were growths of small ground-hugging trees like our scrub-oaks. What they were, of course, we do not know. About five-thirty in the afternoon we rounded Red Bluff Point on the southwesterly corner of Tiburón and came to anchor in the lee of the long point, protected from northerly winds. The “corner” of the island is a chosen word, for Tiburón is a rough square lying plumb with the points of the compass. We searched the shore for Seris and saw none. In our usual condition of hunger, it would have been a toss-up whether Seris ate us or we ate Seris. The one who got in the first bite would have had the dinner, but we never did see a Seri.
The coast at this station was interesting; off Red Bluff Point low flat rocks shelved gradually seaward—fine collecting rocks, with many of the pot-holes which make such beautiful natural aquaria at low tide. Southward of this were long reef-like stone fingers extending outward, with shallow sand-bottom baylets between them, almost like boat slips. Next to this was a bouldery beach with stones imbedded in sand; and finally a coarse sand beach. Here again was nearly every kind of environment except mud-flat and lagoon. We began our collecting on the reef, and found the little pot-holes lovely with hydroids and coral and colored sponge and little bright algae. There were many broken-back shrimps in these pools, difficult little fellows to catch, for they are so transparent as to be almost invisible and they move with great speed by flipping their tails like lobsters. Only their stomachs and flickering gills are visible, and one can watch their insides work as though they were little glass models. We caught many of them by working our hands very slowly under them and raising them gradually to the surface.
On the reef, there were the usual
Heliasters,
anemones, and cucumbers, urchins, and a great number of giant snails,
77
of which we collected many hundreds. High up in the intertidal were many
Tegula
-like snails of the kind we found at Cape San Lucas, although here the water was clear and very cold whereas at Cape San Lucas it had been warm. There were very few Sally Lightfoots here;
Pachygrapsus,
the northern crabs, had taken their place. We took abundant solitary corals and laid in a large supply of plumularian hydroids, gathered carefully and preserved so that they might not be crushed or broken. These animals, in appearance at least, are so like plants that they indicate to the imagination a bridge between flora and fauna, just as some plants, like the tropical sensitive plants and the insect-eating plants, indicate by their apparent nervous and muscular versatility an approach from the other side.
On the reef, we took a number of barnacles, many
Phataria
and
Linckia,
sponges, and tunicates. Moving from the reef to the stone fingers, we saw and captured a most attenuated spider crab,
78
all legs and little body. On the sand bottom between the fingers were many sting-rays lying quietly, and near the edge of one little harbor there were two in copulation, male (or female) lying on its back with its mate on top of it and the heads together. We wanted these two, and so after a moment in which we toughened the fibers of our romantic feelings, we put a light harpoon through both of them at once and brought them up, angry and disillusioned. We had hoped that they might remain fastened so that they might be preserved in coition, but their softer feelings were offended and they disengaged.
Meanwhile Tiny, moving in the little slip-like bays with the skiff, harpooned several more sting-rays. On the beach we took several sand-living cucumbers, and in the bottom of a mud pool searched long and unsuccessfully for a furry crab which had been seen scuttling into its burrow. This was a rich field for collecting, but the horizon markers were true to their position in the Gulf, and except for the profusion on Red Bluff Point reef, where the footing was excellent, there was nothing novel.
When it grew dark, we turned on the deck lights and saw numbers of a barracuda-like fish coming to eat the small fishes that gathered to the light. We put a fish-line on a small trident spear and began throwing it at them. About every tenth cast we struck one and brought him to the deck. And now a curious thing happened.From the shore came a swarm of very large bats. Their bodies were small but they had a twelve- to fifteen-inch wing-spread. They circled restlessly around the boat, although there were no insects about. Sparky was on the rail, spearing barracuda, and he is very much afraid of bats. Suddenly one swooped near him, and he struck at it with the harpoon. By one of those strange accidents, the barbs went into the bat and captured it, and now four or five more dived straight at Sparky’s head and he dropped the harpoon and ran for the galley. The dead bat fell over the side into the water, where we later picked it up.
Then an even stranger thing happened. As though at a signal, every bat of the hundreds suddenly turned and flew away to shore and not another one was seen. We have not yet a report on the one taken, so we do not know what kind of bats they were. There are reports of fish-eating bats, and these may have been that kind. We warned Sparky seriously to keep very quiet about the incident. “Sparky,” we said, “we know that your reputation for truthfulness in Monterey is as good as most. In other words, it is not above reproach. If we were you, when you get back to Monterey, we would never mention to anyone that we had harpooned a bat. We would make up stories and adventures, but there is no reason for straining an already shaky reputation.” Sparky promised he would never tell, but back in Monterey he couldn’t resist and, just as we supposed, a roar of laughter went up. In Monterey they said, “You know what that Sparky said? He swears he harpooned a bat.”
And as punishment to Sparky, when we were questioned we said, “Bat? What bat?” Sparky is a little touchy about the whole subject, and he dislikes bats very intensely now.
Meanwhile we had twelve of the barracuda-like fish. We preserved some of them but did not try to eat any. The sierras and tuna were too delicious to justify making experiments with strong fish.
The mountains of Tiburón were very black against the stars and the sea was calm. On the deck, Tiny made a little noise washing a shirt, for we were not far from Guaymas and Tiny was growing anxious. We discussed bats, and the horror they create in people and the myths about them—in his
Caribbean Treasure,
page 56, Ivan Sanderson makes some very interesting remarks about vampire bats as carriers of rabies, and their whole tie-in with the vampire tradition, so intimately related to werewolfism in the popular mind. A man with rabies, one might infer, could well be the werewolf which occurs all over the world, and vampire and werewolf very often go together. It is a fascinating speculation, and surely the unreasoning and almost instinctive fear of bats might indicate another of those memory-like patterns, some horrible recollection of the evil bats can do.

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