In the next room a rough deal burial case stood upon two stools; tapers were flickering upon the floor; the fumes of burning punk freighted the air and clouded the vision; the place was clean enough, for it was perfectly bare, but it was eminently uninteresting. Close at hand stood a second burial case, an empty one, with the cover standing against the wall; a few hours more and it would find a tenant—he who was dying in rags and filth in the room adjoining. This was the native hospital of the quarter, and the mother of the child was the matron of the establishment.

I will cast but one more shadow on the coolie quarter, and then we will search for sunshine. It is folly to attempt to ignore the fact that the seeds of leprosy are sown among the Chinese. If you would have proof, follow me. It is a dreary drive over the hills to the pest-house. Imagine that we have dropped in upon the health officer at his city office. Our proposed visitation has been telephoned to the resident physician, who is a kind of prisoner with his leprous patients on the lonesome slope of a suburban hill. As we get into the rugged edge of the city, among half-graded streets, strips of marshland, and a semi-rustic population, we ask our way to the pest-house. Yonder it lies, surrounded by that high white fence on the hill-top, above a marsh once clouded with clamorous water-fowl, but now all, all under the spell of the quarantine, and desolate beyond description. Our road winds up the hill-slope, sown thick with stones, and stops short at the great solid gate in the high rabbit fence that walls in the devil's acre, if I may so call it. We ring the dreadful bell—the passing-bell, that is seldom rung save to announce the arrival of another fateful body clothed in living death.

The doctor welcomes us to an enclosure that is utterly whitewashed; the detached houses within it are kept sweet and clean. Everything connected with the lazaret is of the cheapest description; there is a primitive simplicity, a modest nakedness, an insulated air about the place that reminds one of a chill December in a desert island. Cheap as it is and unhandsome, the hospital is sufficient to meet all the requirements of the plague in its present stage of development. The doctor has weeded out the enclosure, planted it, hedged it about with the fever-dispelling eucalyptus, and has already a little plot of flowers by the office window,—but this is not what we have come to see. One ward in the pest-house is set apart for the exclusive use of the Chinese lepers, who have but recently been isolated. We are introduced to the poor creatures one after another, and then we take them all in at a glance, or group them according to their various stages of decomposition, or the peculiar character of their physical hideousness.

They are not all alike; with some the flesh has begun to wither and to slough off, yet they are comparatively cheerful; as fatalists, it makes very little difference to them how soon or in what fashion they are translated to the other life. There is one youth who doubtless suffers some inconveniences from the clumsy development of his case. This lad, about eighteen years of age, has a face that is swollen like a sponge saturated with corruption; he can not raise his bloated eyelids, but, with his head thrown back, looks downward over his cheeks. Two of these lepers are as astonishing specimens as any that have ever come under my observation, yet I have morbidly sought them from Palestine to Molokai. In these cases the muscles are knotted, the blood curdled; masses of unwholesome flesh cover them, lying fold upon fold; the lobes of their ears hang almost to the shoulder; the eyes when visible have an inhuman glance that transfixes you with horror. Their hands are shapeless stumps that have lost all natural form or expression.

Of old there was a law for the leprosy of a garment and of a house; yet, in spite of the stringency of that Mosaic law, the isolation, the purging with hyssop, and the cleansing by fire, St. Luke records: "There met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off; and they lifted up their voices and cried, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" And to-day, more than eighteen hundred years later, lepers gather on the slopes of Mount Zion, and hover at the gates of Jerusalem, and crouch in the shadow of the tomb of David, crying for the bread of mercy. Leprosy once thoroughly engrafted on our nation, and nor cedar-wood, nor scarlet, nor hyssop, nor clean birds, nor ewes of the first year, nor measures of fine flour, nor offerings of any sort, shall cleanse us for evermore.

Let us turn to pleasanter prospects—the Joss House, for instance, one of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair to propitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, with nothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, save only a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turns within it; shrines in a perpetual state of fumigation adorn its nooks and corners; overhead swing shelves of images rehearsing historical tableaux; there is much carving and gilding, and red and green paint. It is the scene of a perennial feast of lanterns, and the worshipful enter silently with burn-offerings and meat-offerings and drink-offerings, which they spread before the altar under the feet of some colossal god; then, with repeated genuflections, they retire. The thundering gong or the screaming pipes startle us at intervals, and white-robed priests pass in and out, droning their litanies.

At this point the artist suggests refreshments; arm in arm we pass down the street, surfeited with sight-seeing, weary of the multitudinous bazaars, the swarming coolies, the boom of beehive industry. Swamped in a surging crowd, we are cast upon the catafalque of the celestial dead. The coffin lies under a canopy, surrounded by flambeaux, grave offerings, guards and musicians.

Chinatown has become sufficiently acclimatized to begin to put forth its natural buds again as freely as if this were indeed the Flowery Land. The funeral pageant moves,—a dozen carriages preceded by mourners on foot, clad in white, their heads covered, their feet bare, their grief insupportable, so that an attendant is at hand to sustain each mourner howling at the wheels of the hearse. An orchestra heads the procession; the air is flooded with paper prayers that are cast hither at you to appease the troubled spirit. They are on their way to the cemetery among the hills toward the sea, where the funeral rites are observed as rigorously as they are on Asian soil.

We are still unrefreshed and sorely in need of rest. Overhead swing huge balloon lanterns and tufts of gold flecked scarlet streamers,—a sight that maketh the palate of the hungry Asiatic to water; for within this house may be had all the delicacies of the season, ranging from the confections of the fond suckling to funeral bake-meats. Legends wrought in tinsel decorate the walls. Here is a shrine with a vermilion-faced god and a native lamp, and stalks of such hopelessly artificial flowers as fortunately are unknown in nature. Saffron silks flutter their fringes in the steams of nameless cookery—for all this is but the kitchen, and the beginning of the end we aim at.

A spiral staircase winds like a corkscrew from floor to floor; we ascend by easy stages, through various grades of hunger, from the economic appetite on the first floor, where the plebian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very house-top, where are administered comforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its length with the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the throb of the shark-skin drum.

Servants slip to and fro in sandals, offering edible birds'-nests, sharks' fins, and beche de mer,—or are these unfamiliar dishes snatched from some other kingdom? At any rate, they are native to the strange people who have a little world of their own in our midst, and who could, if they chose, declare their independence to-morrow.

We see everywhere the component parts of a civilization separate and distinct from our own. They have their exits and their entrances; their religious life and burial; their imports, exports, diversions, tribunals, punishments. They are all under the surveillance of the six companies, the great six-headed supreme authority. They have laws within our laws that to us are sealed volumes. Why should they not? Fifty years ago there were scarcely a dozen Chinese in America. In 1851, inclusive, not more than 4,000 had arrived; but the next year brought 18,000, seized with the lust of gold. The incoming tide fluctuated, running as low as 4,000 and as high as 15,000 per annum. Since, 1868 we have received from 10,000 to 15,000 yearly.

After supper we leaned from the high balcony, among flowers and lanterns, and looked down upon the street below; it was midnight, yet the pavements were not deserted, and there arose to our ears a murmur as of a myriad humming bees shut in clustering hives; close about us were housed near twenty thousand souls; shops were open; discordant orchestras resounded from the theatres; in a dark passage we saw the flames playing upon the thresholds of infamy to expel the evil shades.

Away off in the Bay in the moonlight, glimmered the ribbed sail of a fishing junk, and the air was heavy with an indefinable odor which to this hour puzzles me; but it must be attributed either to sink or sandal-wood—perchance to both!

"It is a little bit of old China, this quarter of ours," said the artist, rising to go. And so it is, saving only a noticeable lack of dwarfed trees and pale pagodas and sprays of willowy bamboo; of clumsy boats adrift on tideless streams; of toy-like tea gardens hanging among artificial rocks, and of troops of flat-faced but complaisant people posing grotesquely in ridiculous perspective.



WITH THE EGG-PICKERS OF THE FARALLONES

Those who have visited the markets of San Francisco during the egg season may have noticed the abundance of large and singularly marked eggs, that are offered for sale by the bushel. The shells of these eggs are pear-shaped, parti-colored, and very thick. They range in color from a light green to grey or brown, and are all of them profusely spotted, or blotted, I might say spattered, with clots of black or brown. Some are beautiful, with soft tints blended in a delicate lace-like pattern. Some are very ugly, and look unclean. All are a trifle stale, with a meat of coarse texture and gamy flavor. But the Italians and the Coolies are fond of them, and doubtless many a gross finds its way into the kitchens of the popular cheap restaurants, where, disguised in omelets and puddings, the quantity compensates for the lack of quality, and the palate of the rapid eater has not time to analyze the latter. These are the eggs of the sea-gull, the gull that cries all day among the shipping in the harbor, follows the river boats until meal-time, and feeds on the bread that is cast upon the water.[2] How true it is that this bread returns to us after many days!

The gulls, during incubation, seek the solitude of the Farallones, a group of desolate and weather-beaten rocks that tower out of the fog about thirty miles distant from the mouth of the harbor of San Francisco. Nothing can be more magnificently desolate than the aspect of these islands. Scarcely a green blade finds root there. They are haunted by sea-fowl of all feathers, and the boom of the breakers mingles with the bark of the seals that have colonized on one of the most inaccessible islands of the group. It is here that myriads of sea-birds rear their young, here where the very cliffs tremble in the tempestuous sea and are drenched with bitter spray, and where ships have been cast into the frightful jaws of caverns and speedily ground into splinters.

The profit on sea-eggs has increased from year to year, and of late speculators have grown so venturesome that competition among egg-gatherers has resulted in an annual naval engagement, known to the press and the public as the egg-war. If two companies of egg-pickers met, as was not unlikely, the contending factions fell upon one another with their ill-gotten spoils—the islands are under the rule of the United States, and no one has legal right to take from them so much as one egg without license—and the defeated party was sure to retire from the field under a heavy shower of shells, the contents of which, though not fatal, were at least effective.

I have before me the notes of a retired egg-picker; they record the brief experience of one who was interested in the last campaign, which, as it terminated the career of the egg-pirates, is not without historical interest. I will at once introduce the historian, and let him tell his own tale.

"On Board the Schooner 'Sierra.'— "Off the City Front. "May 4, 1881.

"5 p.m.—There are ten of us all told; most of us strangers to one another, but Tom and Jim, and Fred, that's me, are pals, and have been these many months. So we conclude to hang together, and make the most of an adventure perfectly new to each. At our feet lie our traps; blankets, woolen shirts, heavy boots, with huge nails in the soles of them, tobacco in bulk, a few novels, a pack of cards, and a pocket flask, for the stomach's sake. A jolly crew, to be sure, and jollily we bade adieu to the fellows who had gathered in the dock to wish us God-speed. Casting loose we swung into the stream, and then slowly and clumsily made sail. The town never looked prettier; it is always the way and always will be; towns, like blessings, brighten just as they get out of reach. Drifting into the west we began to grow thoughtful; what had at first seemed a lark may possibly prove to be a very serious matter. We have to feed on rough rations, work in a rough locality, among rough people, and our profits, or our share of the profits, will depend entirely upon the fruitfulness of the egg-orchard, and the number of hundred gross that we are able to get safely into the market. No news from the town, save by the schooner that comes over at intervals to take away our harvest. No society, save our own, good enough always, provided we are not forcibly confined to it. No amusements beyond a novel, a pipe, and a pack of cards. Ah well! it is only an experience after all, and here goes!

"Sea pretty high, as we get outside the Heads, and feel the long roll of the Pacific. Wind, fresh and cold; we are to be out all night and looking about for bunks, we find the schooner accommodations are limited, and that the captain and his crew monopolize them. We sleep anywhere, grateful that we are able to sleep at all.

"10 p.m.—A blustering head wind, and sea increasing. What little supper we were able to get on board was worse than none at all, for it did not stay with us—anything but fun, this going to sea in a bowl, to rob gull's nests, and smuggle eggs into market.

"May 5th.

"Woke in the early dawn, everything moist and sticky, clammy is the better word, and that embraces the whole case; stiff and sore in every joint; bacon for dinner last night, more bacon for breakfast this morning, and only half-cooked at that. Our delicate town-bred stomachs rebel, and we conclude to fast until we reach the island. Have sighted the Farallones, but are too miserable to express our gratitude; wind and sea still rising; schooner on beam ends about once in forty seconds, between times standing either on her head or her tail, and shaking herself 'like a thing of life.'

"At noon off the landing, a buoy bobbing in the billows, to which we are expected to make fast the schooner, and get to shore in the exceedingly small boat; captain fears to tarry on account of heavy weather; concludes to return to the coast and bide his time; consequently makes for Bolinas Bay, which we reach about 9 p.m., and drop anchor in comparatively smooth water; glad enough to sleep on an even keel at last; it seems at least six months since we left the shining shores of San Francisco, yet it is scarce thirty hours—but such hours, ugh!

"Bolinas Bay, May 6th.

"Wind blowing a perfect gale; we are lying under a long hill, and the narrow bay is scarcely rippled by the blast that rushes over us, thick with flying-scud. Captain resolves to await better weather; some of the boys go on shore, and wander out to a kind of reef at the mouth of the bay, where in a short time they succeed in gathering a fine mess of mussels; the rest of us, the stay-on-boards, rig up a net and catch fifteen large fat crabs; with these we cook a delicious dinner, which we devour ravenously, like half-starved men; begin to realize how storm-tossed mariners feel, and have been recounting hair-breadth escapes, over our pipes on deck; there will be much to tell the fellows on shore, if we are ever so fortunate as to get home again.

"May 7th.

"Though the weather is still bad enough to discourage us landsmen, we put to sea, and once more head for the Farallones. They are hidden in mist, but we beat bravely about, and by-and-by distinguish the faint outlines of the islands looming through the fog! We try to secure the buoy, tacking to and fro; just at the wrong moment our main halyards part, and the sail comes crashing to the deck. To avoid being cast on the inhospitable shore, we put to sea under jib and foresail, and are five miles away before damages are repaired and we dare venture to return; head about, and make fast this time. Hurrah! After several trips of the small boat, succeed in landing luggage and provisions above high-water mark on the Farallones; each trip of the boat is an event, for it comes in on a big breaker, and grounds in a torrent of foam and sand.

"We find two cabins at our disposal; the larger one containing dining-room and kitchen, and chambers above; seven of our boys store their blankets in the rude bunks that are drawn by lot. Tom, Jim, and I secure the smaller cabin, a single room, with bunks on three sides, a door on the fourth.

"9 p.m.—We have dined and smoked and withdrawn to our respective lodges; the wind moans without, a thin, cold fog envelopes us; the sea breaking furiously, the night gloomy beyond conception, but the captain and his crew on the little schooner are not so comfortable as the egg-pickers whom they have left behind.

"May 8th.

"We all rose much refreshed, and after a hearty breakfast, such as would have done credit to a mining-camp in pioneer days, set forth on a rabbit chase. The islands abound in rabbits. Where do they come from, and on what do they feed? These are questions that puzzle us.

"We resolve to attack them. Having armed ourselves with clubs about two feet in length, we proceed in a body until a rabbit is sighted, then, separating, we surround him and gradually close him in, pelt him with stones or sticks until the poor fellow is secured; sometimes three or four are run down together; it is cruel sport, but this is our only hope of fresh meat during the sojourn on the islands; a fine stew for dinner, and some speculation on the prospect of our egg-hunt to-morrow.

"May 9th.

"We did the first work of the season to-day. At the west end of the islands is a chasm, through which the wind whistles; the waves, rushing in from both sides, meet at the centre and leap wildly into the air. Across this chasm we threw a light suspension bridge about forty feet in length and two in width; one crosses it by the aid of a life-line. On the further rock the birds are nesting in large numbers, and to-morrow we begin the wholesale robbery of their nests.

"When the bridge was completed, being pretty well fagged and quite famished, we returned to the cabin, lunched heartily, and spent the afternoon in highly successful rabbit chasing. Plenty of stew for all of us. If Robinson Crusoe had been cast ashore on this island, I wonder how he would have lived? As it is, the rabbits sometimes succeed in escaping us, and without powder and shot it would be quite impossible for one or two persons to bag them. We are beginning to lose faith in the delightful romances of our youth, and to realize what a desert island is.

"May 10th.

"In front of us we each carry a large sack in which to deposit eggs; our boots are clumsy, and the heavy nails that fill their soles make them heavy and difficult to walk in. We also carry a strong staff to aid us in climbing the rugged slopes. About us is nothing but grey, weather-stained rocks; there are few paths, and these we cannot follow, for the sea-birds, though so unused to the presence of man, are wary and shy of his tracks; the day's work has not proved profitable. Few of us gathered any eggs; one who was more successful, and had secured enough to make it extremely difficult for him to scale the rocks, slipped, fell on his face, and scrambled all his store. His plight was laughable, but he was scarcely in the mood to relish it, as he washed his sack and blouse in cold water, while we indulged in cards.



"May 11th.

"Built another bridge over a gap where the sea rushes, and which we call the Jordan. If the real Jordan is as hard to cross, heaven help us. Eggs not very plentiful as yet; we are rather early in the season, or the crop is late this year. More rabbits in the p.m.; more wind, more fog; and at night, pipes, cards, and a few choruses that sound strange and weird in the fire lights on this lonely island.

"May 12th.

"Eggs are so very scarce. The foreman advises our resting for a day. We lounge about, looking off upon the sea; sometimes a sail blows by us, but our islands are in such ill-repute with mariners, they usually give us a wide berth, as they call it. A little homesick towards dusk; wonder how the boys in San Francisco are killing time; it is time that is killing us, out here in the wind and fog.

"May 13th.

"Have been hunting abalones all day, and found but a baker's dozen; their large, shallow shells are glued to the rock at the first approach of danger, and unless we can steal upon these queer fish unawares, and thrust something under their shells before they have shut down upon the rock, it is almost impossible to pry them open. Some of the boys are searching in the sea up to their waists—hard work when one considers how tough the abalone is, and how tasteless.

"May 14th.

"This morning all our egg-pickers were at work; took in the west end, only the high rock beyond the first bridge; gathered about forty dozen eggs, and got them safely back to camp; in some nests there were three eggs, and these we did not gather, fearing they were stale. In the p.m. tried to collect dry grass enough to make a thin mattress for my bunk; barely succeeded; am more than ever convinced that desert islands are delusions.

"May 15th.

"It being Sunday, we rest from our labors; by way of varying the monotony of island life, we climb up to the lighthouse, 300 feet above sea level. The path is zig-zag across the cliff, and is extremely fatiguing. While ascending, a large stone rolled under my foot, and went thundering down the cliff. Jim, who was in the rear, heard it coming, and dodged; it missed his head by about six inches. Had it struck him, he would have been hurled into the sea that boiled below; we were both faint with horror, after realizing the fate he had escaped. Were cordially welcomed by the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and her companion, a young woman who had come to share this banishment. The keeper and his wife visit the mainland but twice a year. Everywhere we saw evidence of the influence of these charming people. The house was tidy—the paint snow-white. The brass-work shone like gold; the place seemed a kind of Paradise to us; even the machinery of the revolving light, the multitude of reflectors, etc., was enchanting. We dreaded to return to our miserable cabins, but were soon compelled to, and the afternoon was spent in the customary rabbit chase, ending with a stew of no mean proportions.

"May 16th.

"More eggs, and afterwards a fishing excursion, which furnished us material for an excellent chowder. We are beginning to look for the return of the schooner, and have been longing for news from shore.

"May 17th.

"A great haul of abalones this p.m. We filled our baskets, slung them on poles over our shoulders Coolie fashion, and slowly made our way back to camp. The baskets weighed a ton each before we at last emptied them by the cabin door. Built a huge fire under a cauldron, and left a mess of fish to boil until morning. The abalones are as large as steaks, and a great deal tougher. Smoke, cards, and to bed; used up.

"May 18th.

"Same program as yesterday, only the novelty quite worn off, and this kind of life becoming almost unendurable.

"May 19th.

"More eggs, more abalones, more rabbits. No signs of schooner yet. Wonder, had Crusoe kept a diary, how many days he would have kept it before closing it with chagrin.

"May 20th.

"Spent the p.m. in getting the abalone shells down to the egg-house at the landing. We have cleaned them, and are hoping to find this speculation profitable; for the shells, when polished and cut, are much used in the market for inlaying and setting in cheap jewelry. We loaded a small tram, pushed it to the top of an incline, and let it roll down the other side to the landing, which it reached in safety. This is the only labor-saving machine at our command.

"May 21st.

"We seem to be going all to pieces. The day commenced badly. Two of the boys inaugurated it by a violent set-to before breakfast—an old grudge broke out afresh, or perhaps the life here has demoralized them. I have lamed my foot. Tide too high for abalone fishing. Eggs growing scarce, and the rabbits seem to have deserted the accessible parts of the island. Everybody is disgusted. We are forgetting our table-manners, it is 'first come first served' now-a-days. I wonder if Robinson—oh, no! he had no one but his man Friday to contend against. No schooner; no change in the weather; tobacco giving out, and not a grain of good humor to be had in the market. To bed, very cross.

"May 22d.

"No one felt like going to work this morning. Affairs began to look mutinous. We have searched in vain for the schooner, now considerably overdue, and are dreading the thought of having to fulfill a contract which calls for six weeks' labor on these islands. Some of the other islands are to be visited, and are accessible only in small boats over a sea that is never even tolerably smooth. This expedition we all dread a little—at least, I judge so from my own case—but we say nothing of it. While thus gloomily brooding over our plight, smoke was sighted on the horizon; we ascended the hill to watch it. A steamer, doubtless, bound for a sunnier clime, for no clime can be less sunny than ours of the past fortnight.... It was a steamer, a small Government steamer, making directly for our island. We became greatly excited, for nothing of any moment had occurred since our arrival. She drew in near shore and cast anchor. We gathered at the landing-cove to give her welcome. A boat was beached in safety. An officer of the law said, cheerfully, as if he were playing a part in a nautical comedy, 'I must beg you, gentlemen, to step on board the revenue cutter, and return to San Francisco.' We were so surprised we could not speak; or were we all speechless with joy, I wonder? He added, this very civil sheriff, 'If you do not care to accompany me, I shall be obliged to order the marines on shore. You will pardon me, but as these islands are Government property, you are requested to immediately withdraw from them.' We withdrew. We steamed away from the windy rocks, the howling caverns, the seething waves, the frightful chasms, the seabirds, the abalones, the rabbits, the gloomy cabins, and the pleasant people at the top of the cliff within the white walls of the lighthouse. Joyfully we bounded over the glassy waves, that grew beautiful as the Farallones faded in the misty distance, and, having been courteously escorted to the city dock, we were bidden farewell, and left to the diversions of the hour. Thus ended the last siege of the Farallones by the egg-pickers of San Francisco. (Profits nil.)"

And thus I fear, inasmuch as the Government proposes to guard the sea-birds until a suitable license is secured by legitimate egg-pickers, the price of gulls' eggs will go up in proportion, and hereafter we shall have to look upon them as luxuries, and content ourselves with the more modest and milder-flavored but undecorated products of the less romantic barn-yard fowl.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: NOTE: The author has confused the murre with the sea-gull. It was the egg of the murre that was marketed.]



A MEMORY OF MONTEREY

I

"Old Monterey"? Yes, old Monterey; yet not so very old. Old, however, inasmuch as she has been hopelessly modernized; the ancient virtue has gone out of her; she is but a monument and a memory. It is the Monterey of a dozen or fifteen years ago I write of; and of a brief sojourn after the briefer voyage thither. The voyage is the same; yesterday, to-day and forever it remains unchanged. The voyager may judge if I am right when I say that the Pacific coast, or the coast of California, Oregon and Washington, is the selvage side of the American continent. I believe this is evidenced in the well-rounded lines of the shore; the smooth meadow-lands that not infrequently lie next the sea, and the comparatively few island-fragments that are discoverable between Alaska and Mexico.

I made that statement, in the presence of a select few, on the promenade deck of a small coaster then plying between San Francisco and Monterey; and proved it during the eight-hour passage, to the seeming edification of my shipmates. Even the bluffs that occasionally jutted into the sea did the picturesque in a half-theatrical fashion. Time and the elements seemed to have toyed with them, and not fought with them, as is the annual custom on the eastern coast of the United States. Flocks of sheep fed in the salt pastures by the water's edge; ranch-houses were perched on miniature cliffs, in the midst of summer-gardens that even through a powerful field-glass showed few traces of wear and tear.

And the climate? Well, the sunshine was like sunshine warmed over; and there was a lurking chill in the air that made our quarters in the lee of the smoke-stack preferable to the circular settee in the stern-sheets. Yes, it was midsummer at heart, and the comfortable midsummer ulster advertised the fact.

What a long, lonesome coast it is! Erase the few evidences of life that relieve the monotonous landscape at infrequent intervals, and you shall see California exactly as Drake saw it more than four centuries ago, or the Argonaut Friars saw it a century later, and as the improved races will see it ages hence—a little bleak and utterly uninteresting.

California secretes her treasures. As you approach her from the sea, you would scarcely suspect her wealth; her lines, though fine and flowing, are not voluptuous, and she certainly lacks color. This was also a part of our steamer-talk under the lee of the smoke-stack; and while we were talking we turned a sharp corner, ran into the Bay of Monterey, and came suddenly face to face with Santa Cruz.

Ah, there was richness! Perennial groves, dazzling white cottages snow-flaking them with beauty; a beach with afternoon bathers; and two straggling piers that had waded out into deep water and stuck fast in the mud. A stroll through Santa Cruz does not dissipate the enchantment usually borrowed from usurious distance; and the two-hours'-roll in the deep furrows of the Bay, that the pilgrim to Monterey must suffer, is apt to make him regret he left that pleasant port in the hope of finding something pleasanter on the dim opposite shore.

We re-embarked for Monterey at dusk, when the distant horn of the Bay was totally obscured. It is seldom more than a half-imagined point, jutting out into a haze between two shades of blue. Stars watched over us,—sharp, clear stars, such as flare a little when the wind blows. But the wind was not blowing for us. Showers of sparks spangled the crape-like folds of smoke that trailed after us; the engine labored in the hold, and the sea heaved as it is always heaving in that wide-open Bay.

In an hour we steamed into a fog-bank, so dense that even the head-light of our ship was as a glowworm; and from that moment until we had come within sound of voices on the undiscovered shore, it was all like a voyage in the clouds. Whistles blew, bells rang, men shouted, and then we listened with hungry ears. A whistle answered us from shore—a piercing human whistle. Dim lights burned through the fog. We advanced with fearful caution; and while voices out of the air were greeting us, almost before we had got our reckoning, we drifted up under a dark pier, on which ghastly figures seemed to be floating to and fro, bidding us all-hail. And then and there the freedom of the city was extended to us, saturated with salt-sea mist. Probably six times in ten the voyager approaches Monterey in precisely this fashion. 'Tis true! 'Tis pity!

Having been hoisted up out of our ship—the tide was exceeding low and the dock high; having been embraced in turn by friends who had soaked for an hour and a half on that desolate pier-head—for our ship was belated, groping her way in the fog,—we were taken by the hand and led cautiously into the sand-fields that lie between the city and the sea.

Of course our plans had all miscarried. Our Bachelors' Hall fell with a dull thud when we heard that the chief bachelor had turned benedict three days before. But he was present with his bride, and he knew of a haunt that would compensate us for all loss or disappointment. We crossed the desert nursing a faint hope. We threaded one or two wide, weedy, silent streets; not a soul was visible, though it was but nine in the evening,—which was not to be wondered at, since the town was divided against itself: the one half slept, the other half still sat upon the pier, making a night of it; for old Monterey had but one shock that betrayed it into some show of human weakness. The cause was the Steam Navigation Co. The effect was a fatal fondness for tendering a public reception to all steamers arriving from foreign ports, after their sometimes tempestuous passages of from eight to ten hours. This insured the inhabitants a more or less festive night about once every week or ten days.

With rioutous laughter, which sounded harsh, yea, sacrilegious, in the sublime silence of that exceptional town, we were piloted into an abysmal nook sacred to a cluster of rookeries haggard in the extreme. We approached it by an improvised bridge two spans in breadth. The place was buried under layers of mystery. It was silent, it was dark with the blackness of darkness; it was like an unholy sepulchre that gave forth no sound, though we beat upon its sodden door with its rusted knocker until a dog howled dismally on the hillside afar off.

Some one admitted us at the last moment, and left us standing in the pitch-dark entrance while he went in search of candles, that apparently fled at his approach. The great room was thrown open in due season and with solemnity. It may have been the star-chamber in the days when Monterey was the capital of the youngest and most promising State in the Union; but it was somewhat out of date when we were ushered into it. A bargain was hastily struck, and we repaired to damp chambers, where every sound was shared in common, and nothing whatever was in the least degree private or confidential. We slept at intervals, but in turn; so that at least one good night's rest was shared by our company.



At nine o' the clock next morning we were still enveloped in mist, but the sun was struggling with it; and from my window I inspected Spanish or Mexican, or Spanish-Mexican, California interiors, sprinkled with empty tin cans, but redeemed by the more picturesque debris of the early California settlement—dingy tiles, forlorn cypresses, and a rosebush of gigantic body and prolific bloom.

We breakfasted at Simoneau's, in the inner room, with its frescos done in beer and shoeblacking by a brace of hungry Bohemians, who used to frequent the place and thus settle their bill. Five of us sat at that uninviting board and awaited our turn, while Simoneau hovered over a stove that was by no means equal to the occasion. It was a breakfast such as one is reduced to in a mountain camp, but which spoils the moment it is removed from the charmed circle of ravenous foresters. We paid three prices for it, but that was no consolation; and it was long before we again entered the doors of one of the chief restaurants of old Monterey.

Before the thick fog lifted that morning we had scoured the town in quest of lodgings. The hotels were uninviting. At the Washington the rooms were not so large as the demands of the landlord. At the St. Charles'—a summer-house without windows, save the one set in the door of each chamber—we located for a brief season, and exchanged the liveliest compliments with the lodgers at the extreme ends of the building. A sneeze in the dead of night aroused the house; and during one of the panics which were likely to follow, I peremptorily departed, and found shelter at last in the large square chamber of an adobe dwelling, the hospitable abode of one of the first families of Monterey. Broad verandas surrounded us on four sides; the windows sunk in the thick walls had seats deep enough to hold me and my lap tablet full in the sunshine—whenever it leaked through the fog.

Two of these windows opened upon a sandy street, beyond which was a tangled garden of cacti and hollyhock and sunflowers, with a great wall about it; but I could look over the wall and enjoy the privacy of that sweet haunt. In that cloistered garden grew the obese roses of the far West, that fairly burst upon their stem. Often did I exclaim: "O, for a delicate blossom, whose exquisite breath savors not of the mold, and whose sensitive petals are wafted down the invisible currents of the wind like a fairy flotilla!" Beyond that garden, beyond the roofs of this town, stretched the yellow sand-dunes; and in the distance towered the mountains, painted with changeful lights. My other window looked down the long, lonesome street to the blue Bay and the faint outline of the coast range beyond it.

Here I began to live; here I heard the harp-like tinkle of the first piano brought to the California coast; here also the guitar was touched skillfully by her grace the august lady of the house, who scorned the English tongue—the more eloquent and rhythmical Spanish prevailed under her roof. One of the members of the household was proud to recount the history of the once brilliant capital of the State, and I listened by the hour to a narrative that now reads to me like a fable.

In the year of Our Lord 1602, when Don Sebastian Viscaino—dispatched by the Viceroy of Mexico, acting under instructions from Philip III. of Spain—touched these shores, Mass was celebrated, the country taken possession of in the name of the Spanish King, and the spot christened Monterey in honor of Gaspar de Zuniga, Count of Monterey, Viceroy of Mexico. In eighteen days Viscaino again set sail, and the silence of the forest and the sea fell upon that lonely shore. That silence was unbroken by the voice of the stranger for one hundred and sixty-six years. Then Gaspar de Portola, Governor of Lower California, re-discovered Monterey, erected a cross upon the shore, and went his way.

In May, 1770, the final settlement took place. The packet San Antonio, commanded by Don Juan Perez, came to anchor in the port, "which"—wrote the leader of the expedition to Padre Francisco Palou—"is unadulterated in any degree from what it was when visited by the expedition of Don Sebastian Viscaino in 1602. After this"—the celebration of the Mass, the Salve to Our Lady, and a Te Deum,—"the officers took possession of the country in the name of the King (Charles III.) our lord, whom God preserve. We all dined together in a shady place on the beach; the whole ceremony being accompanied by many volleys and salutes by the troops and vessels."

When the San Antonio returned to Mexico, it left at Monterey Padre Junipero Serra and five other priests, Lieutenant Pedro Fages and thirty soldiers. The settlement was at once made capital of Alta California, and Portola appointed the first governor. The Presidio (an enclosure about three hundred yards square, containing a chapel, store-houses, offices, residences, and a barracks) was the nucleus of the city; but the mission was soon removed to a beautiful valley about six miles distant, where there was more room, better shelter from the cold west winds, and an unrivalled prospect. The valley is now known as Carmelo.

A fort was built upon a little hill commanding the settlement, and life began in good earnest. What followed? Mexico threw off the Spanish yoke; California was hence forth subject to Mexico alone. The news spread; vessels gathered in the harbor, and enormous profits were realized on the sale and shipment of the hides of wild cattle lately roaming upon a thousand hills.

Then came gradual changes in the government; they culminated in 1846 when Captain Mervin, at the head of two hundred and fifty men, raised the Stars and Stripes over Monterey, and a proclamation was read declaring California a portion of the United States.

The Rev. Walter Colton, once chaplain of the United States frigate Congress, was appointed first alcalde; and the result was the erection of a stone courthouse, which was long the chief ornament of the town; and, somewhat later, the publication of Alcalde Colton's highly interesting volume, entitled "Three Years in California."



II.

In 1829 Captain Robinson, the author of "Life in California" in the good old mission days, wrote thus of his first sight of Monterey: "The sun had just risen, and, glittering through the lofty pines that crowned the summit of the eastern hills, threw its light upon the lawn beneath. On our left was the Presidio, with its chapel dome and towering flag-staff in conspicuous elevation. On the right, upon a rising ground, was seen the castillo, or fort, surmounted by some ten or a dozen cannon. The intervening space between these two points was enlivened by the hundred scattered dwellings that form the town, and here and there groups of cattle grazing.

"After breakfast G. and myself went on shore, on a visit to the Commandant, Don Marian Estrada, whose residence stood in the central part of the town, in the usual route from the beach to the Presidio. In external appearance, notwithstanding it was built of adobe—brick made by the mixture of soft mud and straw, moulded and dried in the sun,—it was not displeasing; for the outer walls had been plastered and whitewashed, giving it a cheerful and inviting aspect. Like all dwellings in the warm countries of America, it was but one story in height, covered with tiles, and occupied, in its entire premises, an extensive square.

"Our Don was standing at his door; and as we approached, he sallied forth to meet us with true Castilian courtesy; embraced G., shook me cordially by the hand, then bowed us ceremoniously into the sala. Here we seated ourselves upon a sofa at his right. During conversation cigarritos passed freely; and, although thus early in the day, a proffer was made of refreshments."

In 1835 R.H. Dana, Jr., the author of "Two Years before the Mast," found Monterey but little changed; some of the cannon were unmounted, but the Presidio was still the centre of life on the Pacific coast, and the town was apparently thriving. Day after day the small boats plied between ship and shore, and the population gave themselves up to the delights of shopping. Shopping was done on shipboard; each ship was a storehouse of attractive and desirable merchandise, and the little boats were kept busy all day long bearing customers to and fro.

In 1846 prices were ruinously high, as the alcalde was free to confess—he being a citizen of the United States and a clergyman into the bargain. Unbleached cottons, worth 6 cents per yard in New York, brought 50 cents, 60 cents, 75 cents in old Monterey. Cowhide shoes were $10 per pair; the most ordinary knives and forks, $10 per dozen; poor tea, $3 per pound; truck-wheels, $75 per pair. The revenue of these enormous imposts passed into the hands of private individuals, who had placed themselves by violence or fraud at the head of the Government.

In those days a "blooded" horse and a pack of cards were thought to be among the necessaries of life. One of the luxuries was a rancho sixty miles in length, owned by Captain Sutter in the valley of the Sacramento. Native prisoners, arrested for robbery and confined in the adobe jail at Monterey, clamored for their guitars, and the nights were filled with music until the rascals swung at half-mast.

In August, 1846, The Californian, the first newspaper established on the coast, was issued by Colton & Semple. The type and press were once the property of the Franciscan friars, and used by them; and in the absence of the English w, the compositors on The Californian doubled the Spanish v. The journal was printed half in English and half in Spanish, on cigarette paper about the size of a sheet of fools-cap. Terms, $3 per year in advance; single copies, 12-1/2 cents each. Semple was a man just suited to the newspaper office he occupied; he stood six feet eight inches in moccasins, was dressed in buckskin, and wore a foxskin cap.

The first jury of the alcaldean court was empanelled in September, 1846. Justice flourished for about three years. In 1849 Bayard Taylor wrote: "Monterey has the appearance of a deserted town: few people in the streets, business suspended," etc. Rumors of gold had excited the cupidity of the inhabitants, and the capital was deserted; elsewhere was metal more attractive. The town never recovered from that shock. It gradually declined until few, save Bohemian artists and Italian and Chinese fishermen, took note of it. The settlement was obsolete in my day; the survivors seemed to have lost their memories and their interest in everything. Thrice in my early pilgrimages I asked where the Presidio had stood; on these occasions did the oldest inhabitant and his immediate juniors vaguely point me to three several quarters of the town. I believe in my heart that the pasture in front of the old church—then sacred to three cows and a calf—was the cradle of civilization in the far West.



The original custom-house—there was no mistaking it, for it was founded on a rock—overhung the sea, while the waves broke gently at its base, and rows of sea-gulls sat solemnly on the skeletons of stranded whales scattered along the beach. A Captain Lambert dwelt on the first floor of the building; a goat fed in the large hall—it bore the complexion of a stable—where once the fashionable element tripped the light fantastic toe. In those days the first theatre in the State was opened with brilliant success, and the now long-forgotten Binghams appeared in that long-forgotten drama, "Putnam, or the Lion Son of '76." The never-to-be-discourteously-mentioned years of our pioneers, '49 and '50, "were memorable eras in the Thespian records of Monterey," says the guide-book. They were indeed; for Lieutenant Derby, known to the literary world as "John Phoenix" and "Squibob," was one of the leading spirits of the stage. But the Thespian records came to an untimely end, and it must be confessed that Monterey no longer tempts the widely strolling player.

I saw her in decay, the once flourishing capital. The old convent was windowless, and its halls half filled with hay; the barracks and the calaboose, inglorious ruins; the Block House and the Fort, mere shadows of their former selves. As for Colton Hall—the town-hall, named in honor of its builder, the first alcalde,—it is a modern-looking structure, that scarcely harmonizes with the picturesque adobes that surround it. Colton said of it: "It has been erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of the convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers. The scheme was regarded with incredulity by many; but the building is finished, and the citizens have assembled in it, and christened it after my name, which will go down to posterity with the odor of gamblers, convicts and tipplers." Bless his heart! he need not have worried himself. No one seems to know or care how the building was constructed; and as for the name it bears, it is as savory as any.

The church was built in 1794, and dedicated as the parish church in 1834, when the missions were secularized and Carmelo abandoned. It is the most interesting structure in the town. Much of the furniture of the old mission is preserved here: the holy vessels beaten out of solid silver; rude but not unattractive paintings by nameless artists—perhaps by the friars themselves,—landmarks of a crusade that was gloriously successful, but the records of which are fading from the face of the earth.

Doubtless the natives who had flourished under the nourishing care of the mission in its palmy days, wagged their heads wittingly when the brig Natalia met her fate. Tradition says Napoleon I. made his escape from Elba on that brig. It was by the Natalia that Hijar, Director of Colonization, arrived for the purpose of secularizing the missions; and his scheme was soon accomplished. But the winds blew, and the waves rose and beat upon the little brig, and laid her bones in the sands of Monterey. It is whispered that when the sea is still and the water clear, and the tide very, very low, one may catch faint glimpses of the skeleton of the Natalia swathed in its shroud of weeds.

There are two attractions in the vicinity, without which I fear Monterey would have ultimately passed from the memory of man. These are the mission at Carmelo, and the Druid grove at Cypress Point. In the edge of the town there is a cross which marks the spot where Padre Junipero Serra sang his first Mass at Monterey. It was a desolate picture when I last saw it. It stood but a few yards from the sea, in a lonely hollow. It was a favorite subject with the artists who found their way thither, and who were wont to paint it upon the sea-shells that lay almost within reach. Now a marble statue of Junipero Serra, erected by Mrs. Leland Stanford, marks the spot.

Six miles away, beyond the hills, above the shallow river, in sight of the sparkling sea, is the ruin of Carmelo. From the cross by the shore to the church beyond the hills, one reads the sacred history of the coast from alpha to omega. This, the most famous, if not the most beautiful, of all the Franciscan missions, has suffered the common fate. In my day the roof was wanting; the stone arches were crumbling one after another; the walls were tufted with sun-dried grass; everywhere the hand of Vandalism had scrawled his initials or his name. The nave of the church was crowded with neglected graves. Fifteen governors of the territory mingle their dust with that consecrated earth, but there was never so much as a pebble to mark the spot where they lie. Even the saintly Padre Junipero, who founded the mission, and whose death was grimly heroic, lay until recent years in an unknown tomb. Thanks to the pious efforts of the late Father Cassanova, the precious remains of Junipero Serra, together with those of three other friars of the mission, were discovered, identified, and honorably reentombed.

From 1770 to 1784 Padre Junipero Serra entered upon the parish record all baptisms, marriages, and deaths. These ancient volumes are carefully preserved, and are substantially bound in leather; the writing is bold and legible, and each entry is signed "Fray Junipero Serra," with an odd little flourish of the pen beneath. The last entry is dated July 30, 1784; then Fray Francesco Palou, an old schoolmate of Junipero Serra, and a brother friar, records the death of his famous predecessor, and with it a brief recital of his life work, and the circumstances at the close of it.

Junipero Serra took the habit of the order of St. Francis at the age of seventeen; filled distinguished positions in Spain and Mexico before going to California; refused many tempting and flattering honors; was made president of the fifteen missions of Lower California—long since abandoned; lived to see his last mission thrive mightily, and died at the age of seventy—long before the fall of the crowning work of his life.

Feeling the approach of death, Junipero Serra confessed himself to Fray Palou; went through the Church offices for the dying; joined in the hymn Tantum Ergo "with elevated and sonorous tones," saith the chronicle,—the congregation, hearing him intone his death chaunt, were awed into silence, so that the dying man's voice alone finished the hymn; then he repaired to his cell, where he passed the night in prayer. The following morning he received the captain and chaplain of a Spanish vessel lying in the harbor, and said, cheerfully, he thanked God that these visitors, who had traversed so much of sea and land, had come to throw a little earth upon his body. Anon he asked for a cup of broth, which he drank at the table in the refectory; was then assisted to his bed, where he had scarcely touched the pillow when, without a murmur, he expired.

In anticipation of his death, he had ordered his own coffin to be made by the mission carpenter; and his remains were at once deposited in it. So precious was the memory of this man in his own day that it was with the utmost difficulty his coffin was preserved from destruction; for the populace, venerating even the wooden case that held the remains of their spiritual Father, clamored for the smallest fragment; and, though a strong body-guard watched over it until the interment, a portion of his vestment was abstracted during the night. One thinks of this and of the overwhelming sorrow that swept through the land when this saintly pioneer fell at the head of his legion.

The California mission reached the height of its prosperity forty years later, when it owned 87,600 head of cattle, 60,000 sheep, 2,300 calves, 1,800 horses, 365 yoke of oxen, much merchandise, and $40,000 in specie. Tradition hints that this money was buried when a certain piratical-looking craft was seen hovering about the coast.

This wealth is all gone now—scattered among the people who have allowed the dear old mission to fall into sad decay. What a beautiful church it must have been, with its quaint carvings, its star-window that seems to have been blown out of shape in some wintry wind, and all its lines hardened again in the sunshine of the long, long summer; with its Saracenic door!—what memories the Padres must have brought with them of Spain and the Moorish seal that is set upon it! Here we have evidence of it painfully wrought out by the hands of rude Indian artisans. The ancient bells have been carried away into unknown parts; the owl hoots in the belfry; the hills are shown of their conventual tenements; while the wind and the rain and a whole heartless company of iconoclasts have it all their own way.

Once in the year, on San Carlos' Day, Mass is sung in the only habitable corner of the ruin; the Indians and the natives gather from all quarters, and light candles among the graves, and mourn and mourn and make a strange picture of the place; then they go their way, and the owl returns, and the weeds grow ranker, and every hour there is a straining among the weakened joists, and a creaking and a crumbling in many a nook and corner; and so the finest historical relic in the land is suffered to fall into decay. Or, perhaps I should say, that was the sorry state of Carmelo in my day. I am assured that every effort is now being made to restore and preserve beautiful Carmelo.



III.

She was a dear old stupid town in my day. She boasted but half a dozen thinly populated streets. One might pass through these streets almost any day, at almost any hour of the day, footing it all the way from the dismantled fort on the seaside to the ancient cemetery, grown to seed, at the other extremity of the settlement, and not meet half a score of people.

Geese fed in the gutters, and hissed as I passed by; cows grazing by the wayside eyed me in grave surprise; overhead, the snow-white sea-gulls wheeled and cried peevishly; and on the heights that shelter the ex-capital the pine-trees moaned and moaned, and often caught and held the sea-fog among their branches, when the little town was basking in the sunshine and dreaming its endless dream.

How did a man kill time in those days? There was a studio on Alvarado Street; it stood close to the post-office, in what may be generously denominated as the busiest part of the town. The studio was the focus of life and hope and love; some work was also supposed to be done there. It was the headquarters of the idle and the hungry, and the seeker after consolation in all its varied forms. Choice family groceries were retailed three times a day in the rear of the establishment; and there we often gathered about the Bohemian board, to celebrate whatever our fancy painted. Now it was an imaginary birthday—a movable feast that came to be very popular in our select artistic circle; again it was the possible—dare I say probable?—sale of a picture at a quite inconceivable price. There were always occasions enough. Would it had been the case with the dinners!

The studio was the thing,—the studio, decked with Indian trophies and the bleached bones of sea birds and land beasts, and lined with studies in all colors under heaven. Here was the oft-lighted peace-pipe; and Orient rugs and wolf-skins for a siesta when the beach yonder was a blaze of white and blinding light, that made it blessed to close one's eyes and shut out the glare—and to keep one's ears open to the lulling song of the sea.

Here we concocted a plan. It was to be kept a profound mystery; even the butcher was unaware, and the baker in total darkness; as for the wine-merchant, he was as blind as a bat. We were to give the banquet and ball of the season. We went to the hall of our sisters,—scarcely kin were they, but kinder never lived, and their house was at our disposal. We threw out the furniture; we made a green bower of the adobe chamber. One window, that bore upon the forlorn vacuum of the main street, was speedily stained the deepest and most splendid dyes; from without, it had a pleasing, not to say refining, medieval effect; from within, it was likened unto the illuminated page of an antique antiphonary—in flames; yes, positively in flames!

A great board was laid the length of the room, a kind of Round Table—with some few unavoidable innovations, such as a weak leg or two, square corners, and an unexpected depression in the centre of it, where the folding leaves sought in vain to join. From the wall depended the elaborate menu, life-size and larger; and at every course a cartoon in color more appetizing than the town market. The emblematic owl blinked upon us from above the door. Invitations were hastily penned and sent forth to a select few. Forgive us, Dona Jovita, if thy guest card was redolent of tea or of brown soap; for it was penned in the privacy of the pantry, and either upon the Scylla of the tea-caddy or the soapy Charybdis it was sure to be dashed at last.

It was rare fun, if I did say it from the foot of the flower-strewn table, clad in an improvised toga, while a gentleman in Joss-like vestments carved and complimented in a single breath at the top of the Bohemian board. From the adjoining room came the music of hired minstrels: the guitar, the violin, and blending voices—a piping tenor and a soft Spanish falsetto. They chanted rhythmically to the clatter of tongues, the ripple of laughter, and the clash of miscellaneous cutlery.

An unbidden multitude, gathered from the highways, and the byways, loitered about the vicinity, patiently—O how patiently!—awaiting our adjournment. The fandango naturally followed; and it enlivened the vast, bare chambers of an adjoining adobe, whose walls had not echoed such revelry since the time when Monterey was the chief port of the Northern Pacific, and basked in the sunshine of a prosperous monopoly. A good portion of the town was there that evening. Shadowy forms hovered in the arbors of the rose garden; the city band appeared and rendered much pleasing music,—though it was rendered somewhat too vigorously. That band was composed of the bone and sinew of the town. Oft in the daytime had I not heard the flageolet lifting its bird-like voice over the counter of the juvenile jeweller, who wrought cunningly in the shimmering abalone shells during the rests in his music? Did not the trombone bray from beyond the meadow, where the cooper could not barrel his aspiring soul? It was the French-horn at the butcher's, the fife at the grocer's, the cornet in the chief saloon on the main street; while at the edge of the town, from the soot and grime of the smithy, I heard at intervals the boom of the explosive drum. It was thus they responded to one another on that melodious shore, and with an ambitious diligence worthy of the Royal Conservatory.

There was nothing to disturb one in the land, after the musical mania, save the clang of the combers on the long, lonely beach; the cry of the sea-bird wheeling overhead, or the occasional bang of a rifle. Even the narrow-gauge railway, that stopped discreetly just before reaching the village, broke the monotony of local life but twice in the twenty-four hours. The whistle of the arriving and departing train, the signal of the occasional steamer—ah! but for these, what a sweet, sad, silent spot were that! I used to believe that possibly some day the unbroken stillness of the wilderness might again envelop it. The policy of the people invited it. Anything like energy or progress was discouraged in that latitude. When it was discovered that the daily mail per Narrow Gauge was arriving regularly and usually on time, it began to look like indecent haste on the part of the governmental agents. The beauty and the chivalry that congregated at the post-office seemed to find too speedy satisfaction at the general delivery window; and presently the mail-bag for Monterey was dropped at another village, and later carted twenty miles into town. The happy uncertainty of the mail's arrival caused the post-office to become a kind of forum, where all the grievances of the populace were turned loose and generally discussed.

Then it seemed possible that the Narrow Gauge might be frowned down altogether, and the locomotive warned to cease trespassing upon the green pastures of the ex-capital. It even seemed possible that in course of time all aliens might require a passport and a recommendation from their last place before being permitted to enter in and enjoy the society of the authorities brooding over that slumberous village.

I have seen as many as six men and a boy standing upon one of the half-dozen street corners of the town, watching, with a surprise that bordered upon impertinence, a white pilgrim from San Francisco in an ulster, innocently taking his way through the otherwise deserted streets. The ulster was perhaps the chief object of interest. I have seen three or four citizens sitting in a row, on a fence, like so many rooks,—and sitting there for hours, as if waiting for something. For what, pray? For the demented squaw, who revolved about the place, and slept out of doors in all weathers, and muttered to herself incessantly while she went to and fro, day after day, seeking the rest she could not hope for this side the grave? Or for Murillo, the Indian, impudent though harmless, full of fancies and fire-water? Or for the return of the whale-boats, with their beautiful lateen-sails? Or for the gathering of the Neapolitan fishermen down under the old Custom House, where they sat at evening looking off upon the Bay, and perchance dreaming of Italy and all that enchanted coast? Or for the rains that poured their sudden and swift rivulets down the wooded slopes and filled the gorges that gutted some of the streets? Was it the love of nature, or a belief in fatalism, or sheer laziness, I wonder, that preserved to Monterey those washouts, from two to five feet in depth, that were sometimes in the very middle of the streets, and impassable save by an improvised bridge—a single plank?

Ah me! It is an ungracious task to prick the bubble reputation, had I not been dazzled with dreams of Monterey from my youth up! Was I piqued when I, then a citizen of San Francisco—one of the three hundred thousand,—when I read in "The Handbook of Monterey" these lines: "San Francisco is not too firmly fixed to fear the competition of Monterey"?

Well, I may as well confess myself a false prophet. The town fell into the hands of Croesus, and straightway lost its identity. It is now a fashionable resort, and likely to remain one for some years to come. Where now can one look for the privacy of old? Then, if one wished to forget the world, he drove through a wilderness to Cypress Point. Now 'tis a perpetual picnic ground, and its fastnesses are threaded by a drive which is one of the features of Del Monte Hotel life. It was solemn enough of yore. The gaunt trees were hung with funereal mosses; they had huge elbows and shoulders, and long, thin arms, with skeleton fingers at the ends of them, that bore knots that looked like heads and faces such as Dore portrayed in his fantastic illustrations. They were like giants transformed,—they are still, no doubt; for the tide of fashion is not likely to prevail against them.

They stand upon the verge of the sea, where they have stood for ages, defying the elements. The shadows that gather under their locked branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs. The fox steals stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage. The coyote sits in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry—at least he did in my dead day. And here are corpse-like trees, that have been naked for ages; every angle of their lean, gray boughs seems to imply something. Who will interpret these hieroglyphics? Blood-red sunsets flood this haunted wood; there is a sound as of a deep-drawn sigh passing through it at intervals. The moonlight fills it with mystery; and along its rocky front, where the sea-flowers blossom and the sea-grass waves its glossy locks, the soul of the poet and of the artist meet and mingle between shadowless sea and cloudless sky, in the unsearchable mystery of that cypress solitude.

So have I seen it; so would I see it again. When I think on that beach at Monterey—the silent streets, the walled, unweeded gardens—a wistful Saturday-afternoon feeling comes over me. I hear again the incessant roar of the surf; I see the wheeling gulls, the gray sand; the brown, bleak meadows; the empty streets; the shops, tenantless sometimes—for the tenant is at dinner or at dominos; the other shops that are locked forever and the keys rusted away;—whenever I think of her I am reminded of that episode in Coulton's diary, where he, as alcalde, was awakened from a deep sleep at the dead of night by a guard, a novice, and a slave to duty. With no little consternation, the alcalde hastened to unbar the door. The guard, with a respectful salute, said: "The town, sir, is perfectly quiet."



IN A CALIFORNIAN BUNGALOW

It was reception night at the Palace Hotel. As usual the floating population of San Francisco had drifted into the huge court of that luxurious caravansary, and was ebbing and eddying among the multitudes of white and shining columns that support the six galleries under the crystal roof. The band reveled in the last popular waltz, the hum of the spectators was hushed, but among the galleries might be seen pairs of adolescent youths and maidens swaying to the rhythmical melody. We were taking wine and cigarettes with the Colonel. He was always at home to us on Monday nights, and even our boisterous chat was suspended while the blustering trumpeters in the court below blew out their delirious music. It was at this moment that Bartholomew beckoned me to follow him from the apartment. We quietly repaired to the gallery among the huge vases of palms and creepers, and there, bluntly and without a moment's warning, the dear fellow blurted out this startling revelation: "I have made an engagement for you; be ready on Thursday next at 4 p.m.; meet me here; all arrangements are effected; say not a word, but come; and I promise you one of the jolliest experiences of the season." All this was delivered in a high voice, to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals; he concluded with the last flourish of the bandmaster's baton, and the applause of the public followed. Certainly dramatic effect could go no further. I was more than half persuaded, and yet, when the applause had ceased, the dancers unwound themselves, and the low rumble of a thousand restless feet rang on the marble pavement below, I found voice sufficient to ask the all-important question, "But what is the nature of this engagement?" To which he answered, "Oh, we're going down the coast for a few days, you and I, and Alf and Croesus. A charming bungalow by the sea; capital bathing, shooting, fishing; nice quiet time generally; back Monday morning in season for biz!" This was certainly satisfactory as far as it went, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded, "No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on Monday nights when we all smoked and laughed with the Colonel—whose uncommonly charming wife was abroad for the summer; and on Tuesday and Saturday nights, when I was at the club, and on Wednesdays, when I did the theatricals of the town, and on Thursdays and Fridays—but never mind! girls were out of the question in my case, and he knew that the bachelor hall where I preside was as difficult of access as a cloister. I might not have given my word without further deliberation, had not the impetuous Colonel seized us bodily and borne us back into his smoking-room, where he was about to shatter the wax on a flagon of wine, a brand of fabulous age and excellence. Bartholomew nodded to Alf, Alf passed the good news to Croesus, for we were all at the Colonel's by common consent, and so it happened that the compact was made for Thursday.

That Thursday, at 4 p.m. we were on our way to the station at 4:30; the town-houses were growing few and far between, as the wheels of the coaches spun over the iron road. At five o'clock the green fields of the departed spring, already grown bare and brown, rolled up between us and the horizon. California is a naked land and no mistake, but how beautiful in her nakedness! An hour later we descended at School-house station; such is the matter-of-fact pet-name given to a cluster of dull houses, once known by some melodious but forgotten Spanish appellation. The ranch wagon awaited us; a huge springless affair, or if it had springs they were of that aggravating stiffness that adds insult to injury. Excellent beasts dragged us along a winding, dusty road, over hill, down dale, into a land that grew more and more lonely; not exactly "a land where it was always afternoon," but apparently always a little later in the day, say 7 p.m. or thereabouts. We were rapidly wending our way towards the coast, and on the breezy hill-top a white fold of sea-fog swept over and swathed us in its impalpable snow. Oh! the chill, the rapturous agony of that chill. Do you know what sea-fog is? It is the bodily, spiritual and temporal life of California; it is the immaculate mantle of the unclad coast; it feeds the hungry soil, gives drink unto the thirsting corn, and clothes the nakedness of nature. It is the ghost of unshed showers—atomized dew, precipitated in life-bestowing avalanches upon a dewless and parched shore; it is the good angel that stands between a careless people and contagion; it is heaven-sent nourishment. It makes strong the weak; makes wise the foolish—you don't go out a second time in midsummer without your wraps—and it is altogether the freshest, purest, sweetest, most picturesque, and most precious element in the physical geography of the Pacific Slope. It is worth more to California than all her gold, and silver, and copper, than all her corn and wine—in short, it is simply indispensable.

This is the fog that dashed under our hubs like noiseless surf, filled up the valleys in our lee, shut the sea-view out entirely, and finally left us on a mountaintop—our last ascension, thank Heaven!—with nothing but clouds below us and about us, and we sky-high and drenched to the very bone.

The fog broke suddenly and rolled away, wrapped in pale and splendid mystery; it broke for us as we were upon the edge of a bluff. For some moments we had been listening to the ever-recurring sob of the sea. There at our feet curled the huge breakers, shouldering the cliff as if they would hurl it from its foundation. A little further on in the gloaming was the last hill of all; from its smooth, short summit we could look into the Delectable Land by candle light, and mark how invitingly stands a bungalow by the sea's margin at the close of a dusty day.

On the summit we paused; certain unregistered packages under the wagon, which had preyed at intervals upon the minds of Alf, Croesus, and Bartholomew, were now drawn forth. Life is a series of surprises; surprise No. 1, a brace of long, tapering javelins having villainous-looking heads, i.e., two marine rockets, with which to rend the heavens, and notify the vassals at the bungalow of our approach. One of these rockets we planted with such care that having touched it off, it could not free itself, but stood stock still and with vicious fury blew off in a cloud of dazzling sparks. The dry grass flamed in a circle about us; never before had we fought fire with wildly-waving ulsters, but they prove excellent weapons in engagements of this character, I assure you. Profiting by fatiguing experience, we poised the second rocket so deftly that it could not fail to rise. On it we hung our hopes, light enough burdens if they were all as faint as mine. With the spurt of a match we touched it, a stream of flaky gold rushed forth and then, as if waiting to gather strength, biff! and away she went. Never before soared rocket so beautifully; it raked the very stars; its awful voice died out in the dim distance; with infinite grace it waved its trail of fire, and then spat forth such constellations of variegated stars—you would have thought a rainbow had burst into a million fragments—that shamed the very planets, and made us think mighty well of ourselves and our achievement. There was still a long dark mile between us and the bungalow; on this mile were strung a fordable stream, a ragged village of Italian gardeners, some monstrous looking hay-stacks, and troops of dogs that mouthed horribly as we ploughed through the velvety dust.

The bungalow at last! at the top of an avenue of trees—and such a bungalow! A peaked roof that sheltered everything, even the deepest verandas imaginable; the rooms few, but large and airy; everything wide open and one glorious blaze of light. A table spread with the luxuries of the season, which in California means four seasons massed in one. Flowers on all sides; among these flowers Japanese lanterns of inconceivable forms and colors. These hung two or three deep—without, within, above, below; nothing but light and fragrance, and mirth and song. We were howling a chorus as we drove up, and were received with a musical welcome, bubbling over with laughter from the lips of three pretty girls, dressed in white and pink—probably the whitest and pinkest girls in all California; and this was surprise No. 2.

Perfect strangers to me were these young ladies; but, like most confirmed bachelors, I rather like being with the adorable sex, when I find myself translated as if by magic.

We were formed of the dust of the earth—there was no denying the fact, and we speedily withdrew; but before our dinner toilets were completed, such a collection of appetizers was sent in to us as must distinguish forever the charming hostess who concocted them. I need not recall the dinner. Have you ever observed that there is no real pleasure in reviving the memory of something good to eat? Suffice it to state that the dinner was such a one as was most likely to be laid for us under the special supervision of three blooming maidens, who had come hither four and twenty hours in advance of us for this special purpose. That night we played for moderate stakes until the hours were too small to be mentioned. I forget who won; but it was probably the girls, who were as clever at cards as they were at everything else. We ultimately retired, for the angel of sleep visits even a Californian bungalow, though his hours are a trifle irregular. Our rooms, two large chambers, with folding doors thrown back, making the two as one, contained four double beds; in one of the rooms was a small altar, upon which stood a statue of the Madonna, veiled in ample folds of lace and crowned with a coronet of natural flowers; vases of flowers were at her feet, and lighted tapers flickered on either hand. The apartment occupied by the young ladies was at the other corner of the bungalow; the servants, a good old couple, retainers in Alf's family, slept in a cottage adjoining. We retired manfully; we had smoked our last smoke, and were not a little fatigued; hence this readiness on our part to lay down the burdens and cares of the day. When the lights were extinguished the moon, streaming in at the seaward windows, flooded the long rooms. It was a glorious night; no sound disturbed its exquisite serenity save the subdued murmur of the waves, softened by an intervening hillock on which the cypress trees stood like black and solemn sentinels of the night.



I think I must have dozed, for it first seemed like a dream—the crouching figures that stole in Indian file along the carpet from bed to bed; but soon enough I wakened to a reality, for the Phillistines were upon us, and the pillows fell like aerolites out of space. The air was dense with flying bed-clothes; the assailants, Bartholomew and Alf, his right-hand man, fell upon us with school-boy fury; they made mad leaps, and landed upon our stomachs. We grappled in deadly combat; not an article of furniture was left unturned; not one mattress remained upon another. We made night hideous for some moments. We roused the ladies from their virgin sleep, but paid little heed to their piteous pleadings. The treaty of peace, which followed none too soon—the pillow-cases were like fringes and the sheets were linen shreds—culminated in a round of night-caps which for potency and flavor have, perhaps, never been equalled in the history of the vine.

Then we did sleep—the sleep of the just, who have earned their right to it; the sleep of the horny-handed son of the soil, whose muscles relax with a jerk that awakens the sleeper to a realizing sense that he has been sleeping and is going to sleep again at his earliest convenience: the sweet, intense, and gracious sleep of innocence—out of which we were awakened just before breakfast time by the most considerate of hostesses and her ladies of honor, who sent into us the reviving cup, without which, I fear, we could not have begun the new day in a spirit appropriate to the occasion.

The first day at the bungalow was Friday and, of course, a fast day; we observed the rule with a willingness which, I trust, the recording angel made a note of. There was a bath at the beach toward mid-day, followed by a cold collation in the shelter of a rude chalet, which served the ladies in the absence of the customary bathing-machine. Lying upon rugs spread over the sand we chatted until a drowsy mood persuaded us to return to the bungalow and indulge in a siesta. It being summer, and a California summer by the sea, a huge log fire blazed upon the evening hearth; cards and the jingle of golden counters again kept us at the table till the night was far spent. Need I add that the ladies presented a petition with the customary night-cap, praying that the gentlemen in the double-chamber would omit the midnight gymnastics upon retiring, and go to sleep like "good boys." It had been our intention to do so; we were not wholly restored, for the festivities of the night previous had been prolonged and fatiguing.

We began our preparations by wheeling the four bedsteads into one room. It seemed to us cosier to be sleeping thus together; indeed, it was quite a distance from the extremity of one room to the extremity of the other. Resigning ourselves to the pillows, each desired his neighbor to extinguish the lights; no one moved to perform this necessary duty. We slept, or pretended to sleep, and for some moments the bungalow was quiet as the grave. In the midst of this refreshing silence a panic seized us; with one accord we sprang to arms; the pillows, stripped of their cases on the night previous, again darkened the air. We leaped gaily from bed to bed, and in turn, took every corner of the room by storm; the shout of victory mingled with the cry for mercy. There was one solitary voice for peace; it was the voice of the vexed hostess, and it was followed by the suspension of hostilities and the instant quenching of the four tapers, each blown by an individual mouth, after which we groped back to our several couches in a state of charming uncertainty as to which was which.

Saturday followed, and, of all Saturdays in the year, it chanced to be the vigil of a feast, and therefore a day of abstinence. The ladies held the key of the larder, and held it, permit me to add, with a clenched hand. It may be that all boys are not like our boys; that there are those who, having ceased to elongate and increase in the extremities out of all proportion, are willing to fast from day to day; who no longer lust after the flesh-pots, and whose appetites are governable—but ours were not. The accustomed fish of a Friday was welcome, but Saturday was out of the question. "Something too much of this," said Croesus the Sybarite. "Amen!" cried the affable Alf. There was an unwonted fire in the eye of Bartholomew when he asked for a dispensation at the hands of the hostess, and was refused.

All day the maidens sought to lighten our burden of gloom; the sports in the bath were more brilliant than usual. We adjourned to the hay-loft and told stories till our very tongues were tired. It is true that egg-nogg at intervals consoled us; but when we had awakened from a refreshing sleep among the hay, and fought a battle that ended in victory for the Amazons and our ignominious flight, we bore the scars of burr and hay-seed for hours afterwards. Cold turkey and cranberry sauce at midnight had been promised to us, yet how very distant that seemed. Hunger cried loudly for beef and bouillon, and a strategic movement was planned upon the spot.

The gaming, which followed a slim supper, was not so interesting as usual. At intervals we consulted the clock; how the hours lagged! Croesus poured his gold upon the table in utter distraction. The maidens, who sat in sack-cloth and ashes, sorrowing for our sins, left the room at intervals to assure themselves that the larder was intact. We, also, quietly withdrew from time to time. Once, all three of the girls fled in consternation—the footsteps of Bartholomew had been heard in the vicinity of the cupboard; but it was a false alarm, and the game was at once resumed. Now, indeed, the hours seemed to fly. To our surprise, upon referring to the clock, the hands stood at ten minutes to twelve. So swiftly speed the moments when the light hearts of youth beat joyously in the knowledge that it is almost time to eat!

Twelve o'clock! Cold turkey, cranberry sauce, champagne, etc., and no more fasting till the sixth day. Having devastated the board, we must needs betray our folly by comparing the several timepieces. Alf stood at five minutes to eleven; Bartholomew some minutes behind him; Croesus, with his infallible repeater, was but 10:45; as for me, I had discreetly run down. The secret was out. The clock had been tampered with, and the trusting maids betrayed. At first they laughed with us; then they sneered, and then they grew wroth, and went apart in deep dismay. The dining-hall resounded with our hollow mirth; like the scriptural fool, we were laughing at our own folly. The ladies solemnly re-entered; our hostess, the spokeswoman, said, with the voice of an oracle, "You will regret this before morning." Still feigning to be merry, we went speedily to bed, but there was no night-cap sent to soothe us; and the lights went out noiselessly and simultaneously.

After the heavy and regular breathing had set in—I think all slept save myself—light footsteps were heard without. Why should one turn a key in a bungalow whose hospitality is only limited by the boundary line of the county surveyor? Our keys were not turned, in fact,—too late—we discovered there were no keys to turn. In the dim darkness—the moon lent us little aid at the moment—our door was softly thrown open, and the splash of fountains could be heard; it was the sound of many waters. As I listened to it in a half dream, it fell upon my ear most musically, and then it fell upon my nose, and eyes, and mouth; it seemed as if the windows of heaven were opened, as if the dreadful deluge had come again. I soon discovered what it was. I threw the damp bed clothes over my head and awaited further developments. I began to think they never would come—I mean the developments. Meanwhile the garden hose, in the hands of the irate maidens, played briskly upon the four quarters of the room—not a bed escaped the furious stream. Nothing was left that was not saturated and soaked, sponge-full. The floor ran torrents; our boots floated away upon the mimic tide. We lay like inundated mummies, but spake never a word. Possibly the girls thought we were drowned; at all events, they withdrew in consternation, leaving the hose so that it still belched its unwelcome waters into the very centre of our drenched apartment.

Rising at last from our clammy shrouds, we gave chase; but the water-nymphs had fled. Then we barricaded the bungalow, and held a council of war. Sitting in moist conclave, we were again assailed and driven back to our rooms, which might now be likened to a swimming bath at low-tide. We shrieked for stimulants, but were stoutly denied, and then we took to the woods in a fit of indignation, bordering closely upon a state of nature.

I thought to bury myself in the trackless wild; to end my days in the depths of the primeval forest. But I remembered how a tiger-cat had been lately seen emerging from these otherwise alluring haunts, and returned at once to the open, where I glistened in the moonlight, now radiant, and shivered at the thought of the possible snakes coiling about my feet. My disgust of life was full; yet in the midst of it I saw the reviving flames dancing upon the hearth-stone, and the click of glasses recalled me to my senses.

We returned in a body, a defeated brotherhood, accepting as a peace-offering such life-giving draughts as compelled us, almost against our will, to drink to the very dregs in token of full surrender. Then rheumatism and I lay down together, and a little child might have played with any two of us. I assured my miserable companions that "I was not accustomed to such treatment." Alf added that "it was more than he had bargained for." Bartholomew had neither speech nor language wherewith to vent his spleen. As for the bland and blooming Croesus—he who had been lapped in luxury and cradled in delight—it was his private opinion, publicly expressed, that "the like of it was unknown in the annals of social history."



Yet on the Sunday—our final day at the bungalow—you would have thought that the gods had assembled together to hold sweet converse; and, when we lounged in the shadow of the invisible Ida, never looked the earth more fair to us. The whole land was in blossom from the summit to the sea; the gardeners, as they walked among their vines, prated of Sicily and sang songs of their Sun-land. There was no chapel at hand, and no mass for the repose of souls that had been sorely troubled; but the charm of those young women—they were salving our wounds as women know how to do—and the voluptuous feast that was laid for us, when we emptied the fatal larder; the music, and the thousand arts employed to restore beauty and order out of the last night's chaos, made us better than new men, and it taught us a lesson we never shall forget—though from that hour to this, neither one nor the other of us, in any way, shape, or fashion whatever, has referred in the remotest degree to that eventful night in a Californian bungalow.