n of a wild configuration; to the south, where
they have struck the seaward shoulder of the mountains of Santa Lucia,
they double back and spire up skyward like smoke. Where their shadow
touches, colour dies out of the world. The air grows chill and deadly as
they advance. The trade-wind freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all
the windmills in Monterey are whirling and creaking and filling their
cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. It takes but a little
while till the invasion is complete. The sea, in its lighter order, has
submerged the earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick,
wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns; and before
the sun's rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken squadrons to
the bosom of the sea. And yet often when the fog is thickest and most
chill, a few steps out of the town and up the slope, the night will be
dry and warm and full of inland perfume.

MONTEREY

MEXICANS, AMERICANS, AND INDIANS

The history of Monterey has yet to be written. Founded by Catholic
missionaries, a place of wise beneficence to Indians, a place of arms, a
Mexican capital continually wrested by one faction from another, an
American capital when the first House of Representatives held its
deliberations, and then falling lower and lower from the capital of the
State to the capital of a county, and from that again, by the loss of
its charter and town lands, to a mere bankrupt village, its rise and
decline is typical of that of all Mexican institutions and even Mexican
families in California.

Nothing is stranger in that strange State than the rapidity with which
the soil has changed hands. The Mexicans, you may say, are all poor and
landless, like their former capital; and yet both it and they hold
themselves apart, and preserve their ancient customs and something of
their ancient air.

The town, when I was there, was a place of two or three streets,
economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes, which were
water-courses in the rainy season, and at all times were rent up by
fissures four or five feet deep. There were no street lights. Short
sections of wooden sidewalk only added to the dangers of the night, for
they were often high above the level of the roadway, and no one could
tell where they would be likely to begin or end. The houses were for the
most part built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them o