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.