ld for so new a
country, some of very elegant proportions, with low, spacious, shapely
rooms, and walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried them to
the heart. At the approach of the rainy season a deathly chill and a
graveyard smell began to hang about the lower floors; and diseases of
the chest are common and fatal among house-keeping people of either sex.

There was no activity but in and around the saloons, where people sat
almost all day long playing cards. The smallest excursion was made on
horseback. You would scarcely ever see the main street without a horse
or two tied to posts, and making a fine figure with their Mexican
housings. It struck me oddly to come across some of the _Cornhill_
illustrations to Mr. Blackmore's "Erema," and see all the characters
astride on English saddles. As a matter of fact, an English saddle is a
rarity even in San Francisco, and you may say a thing unknown in all the
rest of California. In a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you
saw not only Mexican saddles but true Vaquero riding--men always at the
hand-gallop up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corner, urging
their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotatory spurs,
checking them dead with a touch, or wheeling them right-about-face in a
square yard. The type of face and character of bearing are surprisingly
un-American. The first ranged from something like the pure Spanish, to
something, in its sad fixity, not unlike the pure Indian, although I do
not suppose there was one pure blood of either race in all the country.
As for the second, it was a matter of perpetual surprise to find, in
that world of absolutely mannerless Americans, a people full of
deportment, solemnly courteous, and doing all things with grace and
decorum. In dress they ran to colour and bright sashes. Not even the
most Americanised could always resist the temptation to stick a red rose
into his hatband. Not even the most Americanised would descend to wear
the vile dress-hat of civilisation. Spanish was the language of the
streets. It was difficult to get along without a word or two of that
language for an occasion. The only communications in which the
population joined were with a view to amusement. A weekly public ball
took place with great etiquette, in addition to the numerous fandangoes
in private houses. There was a really fair amateur brass band. Night
after night serenaders would be going about the street, sometimes i