Dead ahead and towering above the low-lying mists of the morning
were dark and rocky headlands. As our stubby ship, the Orca,
bore down upon the island from the north, these grim
promontories took on the tortured shapes and the primordial
coloring of extinct volcanoes. The closer our vessel approached
to the dramatic coastline the more weird the changing profile of
the place became. Those of us who had never visited Guadalupe
Island before were utterly unprepared for the wild scenes
revealed by the lifting haze. We had been so intrigued by
accounts of the rediscovery of the Townsend fur seal, a creature
declared to be extinct on several occasions, by the astonishing
comeback of the elephant seals at this island haven and by the
promise of other unusual animals of the coast and the deep that
we had formed no mental picture of the island itself. But here
in the early sunlight was a grotesque volcanic mass rivaling the
finest islands of fiction. The Nautilus might have been harbored
here, or Ben Gunn have roamed