week we spent
at "Woodwardia"! A quarter of a mile to our right was the sea, whose
sound came up to us plainly on still nights. Less than a quarter of a
mile to our left were the forest and the beginning of the Seventeen Mile
Drive. We took the drive once and again, paying the seventy-five cent
entrance fee at the gate of the Pacific Improvement Company's domain,
thus becoming free to wander about in the great wooded territory of the
Peninsula. We took luncheon at the picturesque Pebble Lodge, where we
had soup served in shining abalone shells, and where the electric lights
were shaded by these shells. We halted in leisurely fashion along the
Drive to climb over the rocks and to scramble up the high dunes, with
their riot of flowering beach peas. They were ideal places to sit and
dream with the blue sea before one and the dark forest behind. We
photographed the wind-swept cypress trees, beaten and twisted into
witchlike shapes by the free Pacific breezes. We watched the seals,
lazily basking in the sun on the rocks off shore. We visited the
picturesque village of Carmel, where artists and writers consort. We
selected, under the spell of all this beauty, numerous sites for
bungalows on exquisite Carmel Bay, where one might enjoy forever and a
day the fascination of the sea and the spell of the pine forests.

We visited the Carmel Mission, now standing lonely and silent in the
midst of green fields. A few of the old pear trees planted by the
Mission fathers still maintain a gnarled and aged existence in an
orchard across the road from the church. The church is a simple
structure with an outside flight of adobe steps, such as one sees in
Italian houses, running up against the wall to the bell tower. At the
left of the altar are the graves of three priests, one being that of
Father Junipero Serra, the founder of many of the Missions, the devoted
Spanish priest and statesman who more than once walked the entire
length of six hundred miles along which his Missions were planted. A
wall pulpit stands out from the right wall of the church. The most
touching thing in the empty, dusty, neglected little place is a partly
obliterated Spanish inscription on the wall of the small room to the
left of the main body of the church. It is said to have been painted
there by Father Serra himself, and reads, being translated: "Oh, Heart
of Jesus, always shining and burning, illumine mine with Thy warmth and
light."

A memorable excursion wa