Cruz, but
from your right also, round by Chinatown and Pinos lighthouse, and from
down before you to the mouth of the Carmello river. The whole woodland
is begirt with thundering surges. The silence that immediately surrounds
you where you stand is not so much broken as it is haunted by this
distant, circling rumour. It sets your senses upon edge; you strain your
attention; you are clearly and unusually conscious of small sounds near
at hand; you walk listening like an Indian hunter; and that voice of the
Pacific is a sort of disquieting company to you in your walk.

When once I was in these woods I found it difficult to turn homeward.
All woods lure a rambler onward; but in those of Monterey it was the
surf that particularly invited me to prolong my walks. I would push
straight for the shore where I thought it to be nearest. Indeed, there
was scarce a direction that would not, sooner or later, have brought me
forth on the Pacific. The emptiness of the woods gave me a sense of
freedom and discovery in these excursions. I never in all my visits met
but one man. He was a Mexican, very dark of hue, but smiling and fat,
and he carried an axe, though his true business at that moment was to
seek for straying cattle. I asked him what o'clock it was, but he seemed
neither to know nor care; and when he in his turn asked me for news of
his cattle, I showed myself equally indifferent. We stood and smiled
upon each other for a few seconds, and then turned without a word and
took our several ways across the forest.

One day--I shall never forget it--I had taken a trail that was new to
me. After a while the woods began to open, the sea to sound nearer hand.
I came upon a road, and, to my surprise, a stile. A step or two farther,
and, without leaving the woods, I found myself among trim houses. I
walked through street after street, parallel and at right angles, paved
with sward and dotted with trees, but still undeniable streets, and each
with its name posted at the corner, as in a real town. Facing down the
main thoroughfare--"Central Avenue," as it was ticketed--I saw an
open-air temple, with benches and sounding-board, as though for an
orchestra. The houses were all tightly shuttered; there was no smoke, no
sound but of the waves, no moving thing. I have never been in any place
that seemed so dream-like. Pompeii is all in a bustle with visitors, and
its antiquity and strangeness deceive the imagination; but this town had
plainly