ith, the bear hunter, is my physician,
and I obey him like an oracle....

"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of goat bells in
my ears, which proves to me that the goats are come home and it will
soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter is doubtless now infusing tea;
and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun in a few moments....

"The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work at my notes of
the voyage. It will not be very like a book of mine; but perhaps none
the less successful for that. I will not deny that I feel lonely
to-day.... I have not yet had a word from England, partly, I suppose,
because I have not yet written for my letters to New York; do not blame
me for this neglect, if you knew all I have been through, you would
wonder I had done as much as I have. I teach the ranch children reading
in the morning, for the mother is from home sick.

"Ever your affectionate friend.

"R.L.S."

As soon as Stevenson was well enough he returned to Monterey and fell to
working upon several short stories and the notes of his voyage, which he
brought together and published later under the titles "The Amateur
Emigrant" and "Across the Plains."

Monterey in those days was a small Mexican town; "a place of two or
three streets economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes,
which were the water courses in the rainy season.... The houses were,
for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick....

"There was no activity but in and around the saloons, where the people
sat almost all day 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. In a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you saw not
only Mexican saddles, but true Vaquero riding--men always at a hand
gallop, up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corners, urging
their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotary spurs,
checking them dead, with a touch, or wheeling them right about face in a
square yard. Spanish was the language of the street."

He lodged with a doctor and his wife, and took his meals at the little
restaurant kept by Jules Simoneau, "a most pleasant old boy," with whom
he played chess and discussed the universe daily.

About the middle of December he pushed on to San Francisco, and prepared
to settle down and work for an indefinite time. Though