The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) (12 page)
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Authors: John Steinbeck
BOOK: The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics)
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The exposed rocks had looked rich with life under the lowering tide, but they were more than that: they were ferocious with life. There was an exuberant fierceness in the littoral here, a vital competition for existence. Everything seemed speeded-up; starfish and urchins were more strongly attached than in other places, and many of the univalves were so tightly fixed that the shells broke before the animals would let go their hold. Perhaps the force of the great surf which beats on this shore has much to do with the tenacity of the animals here. It is noteworthy that the animals, rather than deserting such beaten shores for the safe cove and protected pools, simply increase their toughness and fight back at the sea with a kind of joyful survival. This ferocious survival quotient excites us and makes us feel good, and from the crawling, fighting, resisting qualities of the animals, it almost seems that they are excited too.
We collected down the littoral as the water went down. We didn’t seem to have time enough. We took samples of everything that came to hand. The uppermost rocks swarmed with Sally Lightfoots, those beautiful and fast and sensitive crabs. With them were white periwinkle snails. Below that, barnacles and Purpura snails; more crabs and many limpets. Below that many serpulids—attached worms in calcareous tubes with beautiful purple floriate heads. Below that, the multi-rayed starfish,
Heliaster kubiniji
of Xanthus. With
Heliaster
were a few urchins, but not many, and they were so placed in crevices as to be hard to dislodge. Several resisted the steel bar to the extent of breaking—the mouth remaining tight to the rock while the shell fell away. Lower still there were to be seen swaying in the water under the reefs the dark gorgonians, or sea-fans. In the lowest surf-levels there was a brilliant gathering of the moss animals known as bryozoa; flatworms; flat crabs; the large sea-cucumber
12
; some anemones; many sponges of two types, a smooth, encrusting purple one, the other erect, white, and calcareous. There were great colonies of tunicates, clusters of tiny individuals joined by a common tunic and looking so like the sponges that even a trained worker must await the specialist’s determination to know whether his find is sponge or tunicate. This is annoying, for the sponge being one step above the protozoa, at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder, and the tunicate near the top, bordering the vertebrates, your trained worker is likely to feel that a dirty trick has been played upon him by an entirely too democratic Providence.
Heliaster kubiniji
of Xanthus. With
Heliaster
were a few urchins, but not many, and they were so placed in crevices as to be hard to dislodge. Several resisted the steel bar to the extent of breaking—the mouth remaining tight to the rock while the shell fell away. Lower still there were to be seen swaying in the water under the reefs the dark gorgonians, or sea-fans. In the lowest surf-levels there was a brilliant gathering of the moss animals known as bryozoa; flatworms; flat crabs; the large sea-cucumber
12
; some anemones; many sponges of two types, a smooth, encrusting purple one, the other erect, white, and calcareous. There were great colonies of tunicates, clusters of tiny individuals joined by a common tunic and looking so like the sponges that even a trained worker must await the specialist’s determination to know whether his find is sponge or tunicate. This is annoying, for the sponge being one step above the protozoa, at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder, and the tunicate near the top, bordering the vertebrates, your trained worker is likely to feel that a dirty trick has been played upon him by an entirely too democratic Providence.
We took many snails, including cones and murexes; a small red tectibranch (of a group to which the sea-hares belong); hydroids; many annelid worms; and a red pentagonal starfish.
13
There were the usual hordes of hermit crabs, but oddly enough we saw no chitons (sea-cradles), although the region seemed ideally suited to them.
13
There were the usual hordes of hermit crabs, but oddly enough we saw no chitons (sea-cradles), although the region seemed ideally suited to them.
We collected in haste. As the tide went down we kept a little ahead of it, wading in rubber boots, and as it came up again it drove us back. The time seemed very short. The incredible beauty of the tide pools, the brilliant colors, the swarming species ate up the time. And when at last the afternoon surf began to beat on the littoral and covered it over again, we seemed barely to have started. But the buckets and jars and tubes were full, and when we stopped we discovered that we were very tired.
Our collecting ends were different from those ordinarily entertained. In most cases at the present time, collecting is done by men who specialize in one or more groups. Thus, one man interested in hydroids will move out on a reef, and if his interest is sharp enough, he will not even see other life forms about him. For him, the sponge is something in the way of his hydroids. Collecting large numbers of animals presents an entirely different aspect and makes one see an entirely different picture. Being more interested in distribution than in individuals, we saw dominant species and changing sizes, groups which thrive and those which recede under varying conditions. In a way, ours is the older method, somewhat like that of Darwin on the
Beagle.
He was called a “naturalist.” He wanted to see everything, rocks and flora and fauna; marine and terrestrial. We came to envy this Darwin on his sailing ship. He had so much room and so much time. He could capture his animals and keep them alive and watch them. He had years instead of weeks, and he saw so many things. Often we envied the inadequate transportation of his time—the
Beagle
couldn’t get about rapidly. She moved slowly along under sail. And we can imagine that young Darwin, probably in a bos’n’s chair hung over the side, with a dip-net in his hands, scooping up jellyfish. When he went inland, he rode a horse or walked. This is the proper pace for a naturalist. Faced with all things he cannot hurry. We must have time to think and to look and to consider. And the modern process—that of looking quickly at the whole field and then diving down to a particular—was reversed by Darwin. Out of long long consideration of the parts he emerged with a sense of the whole. Where we wished for a month at a collecting station and took two days, Darwin stayed three months. Of course he could see and tabulate. It was the pace that made the difference. And in the writing of Darwin, as in his thinking, there is the slow heave of a sailing ship, and the patience of waiting for a tide. The results are bound up with the pace. We
could
not do this even if we could. We have thought in this connection that the speed and tempo and tone of modern writing might be built on the nervous clacking of a typewriter; that the brittle jerky thinking of the present might rest on the brittle jerky curricula of our schools with their urge to “turn them out.” To turn them out. They use the phrase in speeches; turn them out to what? And the young biologists tearing off pieces of their subject, tatters of the life forms, like sharks tearing out hunks of a dead horse, looking at them, tossing them away. This is neither a good nor a bad method; it is simply the one of our time. We can look with longing back to Charles Darwin, staring into the water over the side of the sailing ship, but for us to attempt to imitate that procedure would be romantic and silly. To take a sailing boat, to fight tide and wind, to move four hundred miles on a horse when we could take a plane, would be not only ridiculous but ineffective. For we first, before our work, are products of our time. We might produce a philosophical costume piece, but it would be completely artificial. However, we can and do look on the measured, slow-paced accumulation of sight and thought of the Darwins with a nostalgic longing.
Beagle.
He was called a “naturalist.” He wanted to see everything, rocks and flora and fauna; marine and terrestrial. We came to envy this Darwin on his sailing ship. He had so much room and so much time. He could capture his animals and keep them alive and watch them. He had years instead of weeks, and he saw so many things. Often we envied the inadequate transportation of his time—the
Beagle
couldn’t get about rapidly. She moved slowly along under sail. And we can imagine that young Darwin, probably in a bos’n’s chair hung over the side, with a dip-net in his hands, scooping up jellyfish. When he went inland, he rode a horse or walked. This is the proper pace for a naturalist. Faced with all things he cannot hurry. We must have time to think and to look and to consider. And the modern process—that of looking quickly at the whole field and then diving down to a particular—was reversed by Darwin. Out of long long consideration of the parts he emerged with a sense of the whole. Where we wished for a month at a collecting station and took two days, Darwin stayed three months. Of course he could see and tabulate. It was the pace that made the difference. And in the writing of Darwin, as in his thinking, there is the slow heave of a sailing ship, and the patience of waiting for a tide. The results are bound up with the pace. We
could
not do this even if we could. We have thought in this connection that the speed and tempo and tone of modern writing might be built on the nervous clacking of a typewriter; that the brittle jerky thinking of the present might rest on the brittle jerky curricula of our schools with their urge to “turn them out.” To turn them out. They use the phrase in speeches; turn them out to what? And the young biologists tearing off pieces of their subject, tatters of the life forms, like sharks tearing out hunks of a dead horse, looking at them, tossing them away. This is neither a good nor a bad method; it is simply the one of our time. We can look with longing back to Charles Darwin, staring into the water over the side of the sailing ship, but for us to attempt to imitate that procedure would be romantic and silly. To take a sailing boat, to fight tide and wind, to move four hundred miles on a horse when we could take a plane, would be not only ridiculous but ineffective. For we first, before our work, are products of our time. We might produce a philosophical costume piece, but it would be completely artificial. However, we can and do look on the measured, slow-paced accumulation of sight and thought of the Darwins with a nostalgic longing.
Even our boat hurried us, and while the Sea-Cow would not run, it had nevertheless infected us with the idea of its running. Six weeks we had, and no more. Was it a wonder that we collected furiously; spent every low-tide moment on the rocks, even at night? And in the times between low tides we kept the bottom nets down and the lines and dip-nets working. When the charter was up, we would be through. How different it had been when John Xantus was stationed in this very place, Cape San Lucas, in the sixties. Sent down by the United States Government as a tidal observer, but having lots of time, he collected animals for our National Museum. The first fine collections of Gulf forms came from Xantus. And we do not feel that we are injuring his reputation, but rather broadening it, by repeating a story about him. Speaking to the manager of the cannery at the Cape, we remarked on what a great man Xantus had been. Where another would have kept his tide charts and brooded and wished for the Willard Hotel, Xantus had collected animals widely and carefully. The manager said, “Oh, he was even better than that.” Pointing to three little Indian children he said, “Those are Xantus’s great-grandchildren,” and he continued, “In the town there is a large family of Xantuses, and a few miles back in the hills you’ll find a whole tribe of them.” There were giants in the earth in those days.
We wonder what modern biologist, worried about titles and preferment and the gossip of the Faculty Club, would have the warmth and breadth, or even the fecundity for that matter, to leave a “whole tribe of Xantuses.” We honor this man for all his activities. He at least was one who literally did proliferate in all directions.
Many people have spoken at length of the Sally Lightfoots. In fact, everyone who has seen them has been delighted with them. The very name they are called by reflects the delight of the name. These little crabs, with brilliant cloisonné carapaces, walk on their tiptoes. They have remarkable eyes and an extremely fast reaction time. In spite of the fact that they swarm on the rocks at the Cape, and to a less degree inside the Gulf, they are exceedingly hard to catch. They seem to be able to run in any one of four directions; but more than this, perhaps because of their rapid reaction time, they appear to read the mind of their hunter. They escape the long-handled net, anticipating from what direction it is coming. If you walk slowly, they move slowly ahead of you in droves. If you hurry, they hurry. When you plunge at them, they seem to disappear in little puffs of blue smoke—at any rate, they disappear. It is impossible to creep up on them. They are very beautiful, with clear brilliant colors, reds and blues and warm browns. We tried for a long time to catch them. Finally, seeing fifty or sixty in a big canyon of rock, we thought to outwit them. Surely we were more intelligent, if slower, than they. Accordingly, we pitted our obviously superior intelligence against the equally obvious physical superiority of Sally Lightfoot. Near the top of the crevice a boulder protruded. One of our party, taking a secret and circuitous route, hid himself behind this boulder, net in hand. He was completely concealed even from the stalk eyes of the crabs. Certainly they had not seen him go there. The herd of Sallys drowsed on the rocks in the lower end of the crevice. Two more of us strolled in from the seaward side, nonchalance in our postures and ingenuousness on our faces. One might have thought that we merely strolled along in a contemplation which severely excluded Sally Lightfoots. In time the herd moved ahead of us, matching our nonchalance. We did not hurry, they did not hurry. When they passed the boulder, helpless and unsuspecting, a large net was to fall over them and imprison them. But they did not know that. They moved along until they were four feet from the boulder, and then as one crab they turned to the right, climbed up over the edge of the crevice and down to the sea again.
Man reacts peculiarly but consistently in his relationship with Sally Lightfoot. His tendency eventually is to scream curses, to hurl himself at them, and to come up foaming with rage and bruised all over his chest. Thus, Tiny, leaping forward, slipped and fell and hurt his arm. He never forgot nor forgave his enemy. From then on he attacked Lightfoots by every foul means he could contrive (and a training in Monterey street fighting had equipped him well for this kind of battle). He hurled rocks at them; he smashed at them with boards; and he even considered poisoning them. Eventually we did catch a few Sallys, but we think they were the halt and the blind, the simpletons of their species. With reasonably well-balanced and non-neurotic Lightfoots we stood no chance.
We came back to the boat loaded with specimens, and immediately prepared to preserve them. The square, enameled pans were laid out on the hatch, the trays and bowls and watchglasses (so called because at one time actual watch-crystals were used). The pans and glasses were filled with fresh sea water, and into them we distributed the animals by families—all the crabs in one, anemones in another, snails in another, and delicate things like flatworms and hydroids in others. From this distribution it was easier to separate them finally by species.
9
When the catch was sorted and labeled, we went ashore to the cannery and later drove with Chris, the manager, and Señor Luis, the port captain, to the little town of San Lucas. It was a sad little town, for a winter storm and a great surf had wrecked it in a single night. Water had driven past the houses, and the streets of the village had been a raging river. “Then there were no roofs over the heads of the people,” Señor Luis said excitedly. “Then the babies cried and there was no food. Then the people suffered.”
The road to the little town, two wheel-ruts in the dust, tossed us about in the cannery truck. The cactus and thorny shrubs ripped at the car as we went by. At last we stopped in front of a mournful
cantina
where morose young men hung about waiting for something to happen. They had waited a long time—several generations—for something to happen, these good-looking young men. In their eyes there was a hopelessness. The storm of the winter had been discussed so often that it was sucked dry. And besides, they all knew the same things about it. Then we happened to them. The truck pulled up to the
cantina
door and we—strangers, foreigners—stepped out, as disorderly-looking a group as had ever come to their
cantina.
Tiny wore a Navy cap of white he had traded for, he said, in a washroom in San Diego. Tony still had his snap-brim felt. There were yachting caps and sweaters, and jeans stiff with fish blood. The young men stirred to life for a little while, but we were not enough. The flood had been much better. They relapsed again into their gloom.
cantina
where morose young men hung about waiting for something to happen. They had waited a long time—several generations—for something to happen, these good-looking young men. In their eyes there was a hopelessness. The storm of the winter had been discussed so often that it was sucked dry. And besides, they all knew the same things about it. Then we happened to them. The truck pulled up to the
cantina
door and we—strangers, foreigners—stepped out, as disorderly-looking a group as had ever come to their
cantina.
Tiny wore a Navy cap of white he had traded for, he said, in a washroom in San Diego. Tony still had his snap-brim felt. There were yachting caps and sweaters, and jeans stiff with fish blood. The young men stirred to life for a little while, but we were not enough. The flood had been much better. They relapsed again into their gloom.
There is nothing more doleful than a little
cantina.
In the first place it is inhabited by people who haven’t any money to buy a drink. They stand about waiting for a miracle that never happens: the angel with golden wings who settles on the bar and orders drinks for everyone. This never happens, but how are the sad handsome young men to know it never will happen? And suppose it did happen and they were somewhere else? And so they lean against the wall; and when the sun is high they sit down against the wall. Now and then they go away into the brush for a while, and they go to their little homes for meals. But that is an impatient time, for the golden angel might arrive. Their faith is not strong, but it is permanent.
cantina.
In the first place it is inhabited by people who haven’t any money to buy a drink. They stand about waiting for a miracle that never happens: the angel with golden wings who settles on the bar and orders drinks for everyone. This never happens, but how are the sad handsome young men to know it never will happen? And suppose it did happen and they were somewhere else? And so they lean against the wall; and when the sun is high they sit down against the wall. Now and then they go away into the brush for a while, and they go to their little homes for meals. But that is an impatient time, for the golden angel might arrive. Their faith is not strong, but it is permanent.
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