I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself.  The recollections and the emotions all were sad, and only sad.

   Fugit, interea fugit irreparabile tempus.

The past was real.  The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellant.  I saw the big ships lying in the stream, the Alert, the California, the Rosa, with her Italians; then the handsome Ayacucho, my favorite; the poor dear old Pilgrim, the home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide-houses, with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere.  All, all were gone! not a vestige to mark where one hide-house stood.  The oven, too, was gone.  I searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar.  I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here!  What changes to me!  Where were they all?  Why should I care for them,—­ poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific!  Time and death seemed to transfigure them.  Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where?  In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck,—­

   ``When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
     He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
     Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.’’

The light-hearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor’s life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them.

Even the animals are gone,—­ the colony of dogs, the broods of poultry, the useful horses; but the coyotes bark still in the woods, for they belong not to man, and are not touched by his changes.

I walked slowly up the hill, finding my way among the few bushes, for the path was long grown over, and sat down where we used to rest in carrying our burdens of wood, and to look out for vessels that might, though so seldom, be coming down from the windward.

To rally myself by calling to mind my own better fortune and nobler lot, and cherished surroundings at home, was impossible.  Borne down by depression, the day being yet at its noon, and the sun over the old point,—­ it is four miles to the town, the Presidio,—­ I have walked it often, and can do it once more,—­ I passed the familiar objects, and it seemed to me that I remembered them better than those of any other place I had ever been in;—­ the opening to the little cave; the low hills where we cut wood and killed rattlesnakes, and where our dogs chased the coyotes; and the black ground where so many of the ship’s crew and beach-combers used to bring up on their return at the end of a liberty day, and spend the night sub Jove.