Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

  Easily the second most important animal of this shore in point of quantity was the brittle-star. We had read of their numbers in the Gulf and here they were, mats and clusters of them, giants under the rocks. It was simple to pick up a hundred at a time in black, twisting, squirming knots. There were five species of them, and these we took in large numbers also, for in preservation they sometimes cast off their legs or curl up into knots, and we wished to have a number of perfect specimens. Starfish were abundant here and we took six varieties. The difference between the brittle-star and the starfish is interestingly reflected in the scientific names—“Ophio” is a Greek root signifying “serpent”—the round compact body and long serpent-like arms of the brittle-star are suggested in the generic name “ophiuran,” while the more truly star-like form of the starfish is recognizable in the Latin root “Astra,” which occurs in so many of its proper names, “Heliaster,” “Astrometis,” etc. We found three species of urchins, among them the very sharp-spined and poisonous Centrechinus mexicanus; approximately ten different kinds of crabs, four of shrimps, a number of anemones of various types, a great number of worms, including our enemy Eurythoë, which seems to occur everywhere in the Gulf, several species of naked mollusks, and a good number of peanut worms. The rocks and the sand underneath them were heavily populated. There were chitons and keyhole limpets, a number of species of clams, flatworms, sponges, bryozoa, and numerous snails.

  Again the collecting buckets were very full, but already we had begun the elimination of animals to be taken. On this day we took enough of the sulphury cucumbers and brittle-stars for our needs. These were carefully preserved, but when found again at a new station they would simply be noted in the collecting record, unless some other circumstance such as color change or size variation prevailed. Thus, as we proceeded, we gradually stopped collecting certain species and only noted them as occurring.

  On board the Western Flyer, again we laid out the animals in pans and prepared them for anesthetization. In one of the sea-cucumbers we found a small commensal fish 25 which lived well inside the anus. It moved in and out with great ease and speed, resting invariably head inward. In the pan we ejected this fish by a light pressure on the body of the cucumber, but it quickly returned and entered the anus again. The pale, colorless appearance of this fish seemed to indicate that it habitually lived there.

  It is interesting to see how areas are sometimes dominated by one or two species. On this beach the yellow-green cucumber was everywhere, with giant brittle-stars a close second. Neither of these animals has any effective offensive property as far as we know, although neither of them seems to be a delicacy enjoyed by other animals. There does seem to be a balance which, when passed by a certain species, allows that animal numerically to dominate a given area. When this threshold of successful reproduction and survival is crossed, the area becomes the special residence of this form. Then it seems other animals which might be either hostile or perhaps the prey of the dominating animal would be wiped out or would desert the given area. In many cases the arrival and success of a species seem to be by chance entirely. In some northern areas, where the ice of winter yearly scours and cleans the rocks, it has been noted that summer brings sometimes one dominant species and sometimes another, the success factor seeming to be prior arrival and an early start.26 With marine fauna, as with humans, priority and possession appear to be vastly important to survival and dominance. But sometimes it is found that the very success of an animal is its downfall. There are examples where the available food supply is so exhausted by the rapid and successful reproduction that the animal must migrate or die. Sometimes, also, the very by-products of the animals’ own bodies prove poisonous to a too great concentration of their own species.

  It is difficult, when watching the little beasts, not to trace human parallels. The greatest danger to a speculative biologist is analogy. It is a pitfall to be avoided—the industry of the bee, the economics of the ant, the villainy of the snake, all in human terms have given us profound misconceptions of the animals. But parallels are amusing if they are not taken too seriously as regards the animal in question, and are downright valuable as regards humans. The routine of changing domination is a case in point. One can think of the attached and dominant human who has captured the place, the property, and the security. He dominates his area. To protect it, he has police who know him and who are dependent on him for a living. He is protected by good clothing, good houses, and good food. He is protected even against illness. One would say that he is safe, that he would have many children, and that his seed would in a short time litter the world. But in his fight for dominance he has pushed out others of his species who were not so fit to dominate, and perhaps these have become wanderers, improperly clothed, ill fed, having no security and no fixed base. These should really perish, but the reverse seems true. The dominant human, in his security, grows soft and fearful. He spends a great part of his time in protecting himself. Far from reproducing rapidly, he has fewer children, and the ones he does have are ill protected inside themselves because so thoroughly protected from without. The lean and hungry grow strong, and the strongest of them are selected out. Having nothing to lose and all to gain, these selected hungry and rapacious ones develop attack rather than defense techniques, and become strong in them, so that one day the dominant man is eliminated and the strong and hungry wanderer takes his place.

  And the routine is repeated. The new dominant entrenches himself and then softens. The turnover of dominant human families is very rapid, a few generations usually sufficing for their rise and flowering and decay. Sometimes, as in the case of Hearst, the rise and glory and decay take place in one generation and nothing is left. One dominant thing sometimes does survive and that is not even well defined; some quality of the spirit of an individual continues to dominate. Whereas the great force which was Hearst has died before the death of the man and will soon be forgotten except perhaps as a ridiculous and vulgar fable, the spirit and thought of Socrates not only survive, but continue as living entities.

  There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success. A man—a viewing-point man—while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man thinks of Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he regards them with love because they are the symbols of the good he admires, and he hates the symbols of the bad. But actually he would rather be successful than good. In an animal other than man we would replace the term “good” with “weak survival quotient” and the term “bad” with “strong survival quotient.” Thus, man in his thinking or reverie status admires the progression toward extinction, but in the unthinking stimulus which really activates him he tends toward survival. Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness. Perhaps, as has been suggested, his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming, bound by his physical memories to a past of struggle and survival, limited in his futures by the uneasiness of thought and consciousness.

  Back on the Western Flyer, Sparky cooked the tuna in a sauce of tomatoes and onions and spices and we ate magnificently. Each rock turned over had not been heavy, but we had turned over many tons of rocks in
all. And now the work with the animals had to go on, the preservation and labeling. But we rested and drank a little beer, which in this condition of weariness is rest itself.

  While we were eating, a boat came alongside and two Indians climbed aboard. Their clothing was better than that of the poor people of the day before. They were, after all, within a day’s canoe trip of La Paz, and some of the veneer of that city had stuck to them. Their clothing was patched and ragged, but at least not falling apart from decay. We asked Sparky and Tiny to bring them a little wine, and after two glasses they became very affable, making us think of the intolerance of the Indian for alcohol. Later it developed that Sparky and Tiny had generously laced the wine with whisky, which proved just the opposite about the Indians’ tolerance for alcohol. None of us could have drunk two tumblers, half whisky and half wine, but these men did and became gay and companionable. They were barefoot and carried the iron harpoons of the region, and in the bottom of their canoe lay a huge fish. Their canoe was typical of the region and was interesting. There are no large trees in the southern part of the Peninsula, hence all the canoes come from the mainland, most of them being made near Mazatlán. They are double-ended canoes carved from a single log of light wood, braced inside with struts. Sometimes a small sail is set, but ordinarily they are paddled swiftly by two men, one at either end. They are seaworthy and fast. The wood inside and out is covered with a thin layer of white or blue plaster, waterproof and very hard. This is made by the people themselves and applied regularly. It is not a paint, but a hard, shell-like plaster, and we could not learn how it is made although this is probably well known to many people. Equipped with one of these canoes, an iron harpoon, a pair of trousers, shirt, and hat, a young man is fairly well set up in life. In fact, the acquiring of a Nayarit canoe will probably give a young man so much security in his own eyes and make him so desirable in the eyes of others that he will promptly get married.

  It is said so often and in such ignorance that Mexicans are contented, happy people. “They don’t want anything.” This, of course, is not a description of the happiness of Mexicans, but of the unhappiness of the person who says it. For Americans, and probably all northern peoples, are all masses of wants growing out of inner insecurity. The great drive of our people stems from insecurity. It is often considered that the violent interest in little games, the mental rat-mazes of contract bridge, and the purposeful striking of little white balls with sticks, comes from an inner sterility. But more likely it comes from an inner complication. Boredom arises not so often from too little to think about, as from too much, and none of it clear nor clean nor simple. Bridge is a means of forgetting the thousands of little irritations of a mind over-crowded with anarchy. For bridge has a purpose, that of taking as many tricks as possible. The end is clear and very simple. But nothing in the lives of bridge-players is clean-cut, and no ends are defined. And so they retire into some orderly process, even in a game, from the messy complication of their lives. It is possible, although we do not know this, that the poor Mexican Indian is a little less messy in his living, having a baby, spearing a fish, getting drunk, backing a political candidate; each one of these is a clear, free process, ending in a result. We have thought of this in regard to the bribes one sometimes gives to Mexican officials. This is universally condemned by Americans, and yet it is a simple, easy process. A bargain is struck, a price named, the money paid, a graceful compliment exchanged, the service performed, and it is over. He is not your man nor you his. A little process has been terminated. It is rather like the old-fashioned buying and selling for cash or produce.

  We find we like this cash-and-carry bribery as contrasted with our own system of credits. With us, no bargain is struck, no price named, nothing is clear. We go to a friend who knows a judge. The friend goes to the judge. The judge knows a senator who has the ear of the awarder of contracts. And eventually we sell five carloads of lumber. But the process has only begun. Every member of the chain is tied to every other. Ten years later the son of the awarder of contracts must be appointed to Annapolis. The senator must have traffic tickets fixed for many years to come. The judge has a political lien on your friend, and your friend taxes you indefinitely with friends who need jobs. It would be simpler and cheaper to go to the awarder of contracts, give him one-quarter of the price of the lumber, and get it over with. But that is dishonest, that is a bribe. Everyone in the credit chain eventually hates and fears everyone else. But the bribe-bargain, having no enforcing mechanism, promotes mutual respect and a genuine liking. If the accepter of a bribe cheats you, you will not go to him again and he will soon have to leave the public service. But if he fulfills his contract, you have a new friend whom you can trust.

  We do not know whether Mexicans are happier than we; it is probable that they are exactly as happy. However, we do know that the channels of their happiness or unhappiness are different from ours, just as their time sense is different. We can invade neither, but it is some gain simply to know that it is so.

  As the men on our deck continued with what we thought was wine and they probably considered some expensive foreign beverage (it must have tasted bad enough to be very foreign and very expensive), they uncovered a talent for speech we have often noticed in these people. They are natural orators, filling their sentences with graceful forms, with similes and elegant parallels. Our oldest man delivered for us a beautiful political speech. He was an ardent admirer of General Almazán, who was then a candidate for the Mexican presidency. Our Indian likened the General militarily to the god of war, but whether Mars, or Huitzilopochtli, he did not say. In physical beauty the General stemmed from Apollo, not he of the Belvedere, but an earlier, sturdier Apollo. In kindness and forethought and wisdom Almazán was rather above the lesser deities. Our man even touched on the General’s abilities in bed, although how he knew he did not say. We gathered, though, that the General was known and well thought of in this respect by his total feminine constituency. “He is a strong man,” said our orator, holding himself firmly upright by the port stay. One of us interposed, “When he is elected there will be more fish in the sea for the poor people of Mexico.” And the orator nodded wisely. “That is so my friend,” he said. It was later that we learned that General Camacho, the other candidate, had many of the same beautiful qualities as General Almazán. And since he won, perhaps he had them more highly developed. For political virtues always triumph, and when two such colossi as these oppose each other, one can judge their relative excellences only by counting the vote.

  We had known that sooner or later we must develop an explanation for what we were doing which would be short and convincing. It couldn’t be the truth because that wouldn’t be convincing at all. How can you say to a people who are preoccupied with getting enough food and enough children that you have come to pick up useless little animals so that perhaps your world picture will be enlarged? That didn’t even convince us. But there had to be a story, for everyone asked us. One of us had once taken a long walking trip through the southern United States. At first he had tried to explain that he did it because he liked to walk and because he saw and felt the country better that way. When he gave this explanation there was unbelief and dislike for him. It sounded like a lie. Finally a man said to him, “You can’t fool me, you’re doing it on a bet.” And after that, he used this explanation, and everyone liked and understood him from then on. So with these men we developed our story and stuck to it thereafter. We were collecting curios, we said. These beautiful little animals and shells, while they abounded so greatly here as to be valueless, had, because of their scarcity in the United States, a certain value. They would not make us rich but it was at least profitable to take them. And besides, we liked taking them. Once we had developed this story we never had any more trouble. They all understood us then, and brought us what they thought were rare articles for the collection. They considered that we might get very rich. Thank heaven they do not know that when at last we came back to San Diego the customs fixed
a value on our thousands of pickled animals of five dollars. We hope these Indians never find it out; we would go down steeply in their estimations.

  Our men went away finally a trifle intoxicated, but not forgetting to take an armload of empty tomato cans. They value tin cans very highly.

  It would not have done to sail for La Paz harbor that night, for the pilot has short hours and any boat calling for him out of his regular hours must pay double. But we wanted very much to get to La Paz; we were out of beer and already the water in our tanks was stale-tasting. It had seemed to us that it was stale when we put it in and time did not improve it. It isn’t likely that we would have died of thirst. The second or third day would undoubtedly have seen us drinking the unpleasant stuff. But there were other reasons why we longed for La Paz. Cape San Lucas had not really been a town, and our crew had convinced itself that it had been a very long time out of touch with civilization. In civilization we think they included some items which, if anything, are attenuated in highly civilized groups. In addition, there is the genuine fascination of the city of La Paz. Everyone in the area knows the greatness of La Paz. You can get anything in the world there, they say. It is a huge place—not of course so monstrous as Guaymas or Mazatlán, but beautiful out of all comparison. The Indians paddle hundreds of miles to be at La Paz on a feast day. It is a proud thing to have been born in La Paz, and a cloud of delight hangs over the distant city from the time when it was the great pearl center of the world. The robes of the Spanish kings and the stoles of bishops in Rome were stiff with the pearls from La Paz. There’s a magic-carpet sound to the name, anyway. And it is an old city, as cities in the West are old, and very venerable in the eyes of Indians of the Gulf. Guaymas is busier, they say, and Mazatlán gayer, perhaps, but La Paz is antigua.