" ... to throw an artist into a frenzy ... "

7, Feb, 2018

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Coast Trails

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In this passage Chase encounter's what we now know as Point Lobos

Reserve and 17 Mile Drive along the coast of Carmel and Pacific

Grove, California. His depiction concludes as he takes a

flight-of-fancy, no doubt making an effort to share the sublimity

of the place, that ultimately even he is unable to describe.

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" Pines grew here along the cliff, outlining with tawny stem and dark magnificence

of foliage, the most exquisite of vistas. The coast was broken by little bays full of

brown seaweed that rose and fell indolently with the slow breathing of the sea.

Islets were scattered along as if they had dropped like pebbles out of a full hand. 

I do not think there can be anywhere on our shores a more enchanting piece of 

coast than this, and the next ten miles to the north. It is the acme of what is 

generally named the romantic in sea scenery, and is calculated I should think

to throw an artist into a frenzy in which he would paint one final and conscious

master-piece, then close the color-box, camp stool, and umbrella, and hurl

them all over the cliff together. "

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photo by J. Smeaton Chase

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