FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 2:  NOTE:  The author has confused the murre with the sea-gull.  It was the egg of the murre that was marketed.]

A MEMORY OF MONTEREY

I

“Old Monterey”?  Yes, old Monterey; yet not so very old.  Old, however, inasmuch as she has been hopelessly modernized; the ancient virtue has gone out of her; she is but a monument and a memory.  It is the Monterey of a dozen or fifteen years ago I write of; and of a brief sojourn after the briefer voyage thither.  The voyage is the same; yesterday, to-day and forever it remains unchanged.  The voyager may judge if I am right when I say that the Pacific coast, or the coast of California, Oregon and Washington, is the selvage side of the American continent.  I believe this is evidenced in the well-rounded lines of the shore; the smooth meadow-lands that not infrequently lie next the sea, and the comparatively few island-fragments that are discoverable between Alaska and Mexico.

I made that statement, in the presence of a select few, on the promenade deck of a small coaster then plying between San Francisco and Monterey; and proved it during the eight-hour passage, to the seeming edification of my shipmates.  Even the bluffs that occasionally jutted into the sea did the picturesque in a half-theatrical fashion.  Time and the elements seemed to have toyed with them, and not fought with them, as is the annual custom on the eastern coast of the United States.  Flocks of sheep fed in the salt pastures by the water’s edge; ranch-houses were perched on miniature cliffs, in the midst of summer-gardens that even through a powerful field-glass showed few traces of wear and tear.

And the climate?  Well, the sunshine was like sunshine warmed over; and there was a lurking chill in the air that made our quarters in the lee of the smoke-stack preferable to the circular settee in the stern-sheets.  Yes, it was midsummer at heart, and the comfortable midsummer ulster advertised the fact.

What a long, lonesome coast it is!  Erase the few evidences of life that relieve the monotonous landscape at infrequent intervals, and you shall see California exactly as Drake saw it more than four centuries ago, or the Argonaut Friars saw it a century later, and as the improved races will see it ages hence—­a little bleak and utterly uninteresting.

California secretes her treasures.  As you approach her from the sea, you would scarcely suspect her wealth; her lines, though fine and flowing, are not voluptuous, and she certainly lacks color.  This was also a part of our steamer-talk under the lee of the smoke-stack; and while we were talking we turned a sharp corner, ran into the Bay of Monterey, and came suddenly face to face with Santa Cruz.