of small waists, and pretty
faces, smiling cunningly. My mind had sometimes reverted to former
scenes, when I had a mother and a sister. I had sighed for a partner to
dance or waltz with on the green, while our old servant was playing on
his violin some antiquated en avant deux.

Now I had found all that, and a merry time I had of it. True, the sack
of doubloons helped me wonderfully. Within a week after my arrival, I
had a magnificent saddle embossed with silver, velvet breeches instead
of cloth leggings, a hat and feathers, glossy pumps, red sash, velvet
round-about, and the large cape or cloak, the eternal, and sometimes the
only, garment of a western Mexican grandee, in winter or in summer, by
night or by day. I say it was a merry time, and it agreed well with me.

Dance I did! and sing and court too. My old travelling companion, the
missionary, remonstrated a little, but the girls laughed at him, and I
clearly pointed out to him that he was wrong. If my English readers
only knew what a sweet, pretty little thing is a Monterey girl, they
would all pack up their wardrobes to go there and get married. It would
be a great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your
love of coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions
of what is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and
render it as stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United
States, with its nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one "a-b-c" school,
and its immense stone jail, very considerately made large enough to
contain its whole population.

The governor was General Morreno, an old soldier, of the genuine
Castilian stock; proud of his blood, proud of his daughters, of himself,
of his dignities, proud of every thing--but, withal, he was benevolence
and hospitality personified. His house was open to all (that is to say,
all who could boast of having white blood), and the time passed there in
continual fiestas, in which pleasure succeeded to pleasure, music to
dancing; courting with the eyes to courting with the lips, just as
lemonade succeeded to wine, and creams to grapes and peaches. But
unhappily, nature made a mistake in our conformation, and, alas! man
must repose from pleasure as he does from labour. It is a great pity,
for life is short, and repose is so much time lost; at so thought I at
eighteen.

Monterey is a very ancient city; it was founded in the seventeenth
century by some Portugues