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,
satur