With rioutous laughter, which sounded harsh, yea, sacrilegious, in the sublime silence of that exceptional town, we were piloted into an abysmal nook sacred to a cluster of rookeries haggard in the extreme.  We approached it by an improvised bridge two spans in breadth.  The place was buried under layers of mystery.  It was silent, it was dark with the blackness of darkness; it was like an unholy sepulchre that gave forth no sound, though we beat upon its sodden door with its rusted knocker until a dog howled dismally on the hillside afar off.

Some one admitted us at the last moment, and left us standing in the pitch-dark entrance while he went in search of candles, that apparently fled at his approach.  The great room was thrown open in due season and with solemnity.  It may have been the star-chamber in the days when Monterey was the capital of the youngest and most promising State in the Union; but it was somewhat out of date when we were ushered into it.  A bargain was hastily struck, and we repaired to damp chambers, where every sound was shared in common, and nothing whatever was in the least degree private or confidential.  We slept at intervals, but in turn; so that at least one good night’s rest was shared by our company.

[Illustration:  Monterey, 1850]

At nine o’ the clock next morning we were still enveloped in mist, but the sun was struggling with it; and from my window I inspected Spanish or Mexican, or Spanish-Mexican, California interiors, sprinkled with empty tin cans, but redeemed by the more picturesque debris of the early California settlement—­dingy tiles, forlorn cypresses, and a rosebush of gigantic body and prolific bloom.

We breakfasted at Simoneau’s, in the inner room, with its frescos done in beer and shoeblacking by a brace of hungry Bohemians, who used to frequent the place and thus settle their bill.  Five of us sat at that uninviting board and awaited our turn, while Simoneau hovered over a stove that was by no means equal to the occasion.  It was a breakfast such as one is reduced to in a mountain camp, but which spoils the moment it is removed from the charmed circle of ravenous foresters.  We paid three prices for it, but that was no consolation; and it was long before we again entered the doors of one of the chief restaurants of old Monterey.

Before the thick fog lifted that morning we had scoured the town in quest of lodgings.  The hotels were uninviting.  At the Washington the rooms were not so large as the demands of the landlord.  At the St. Charles’—­a summer-house without windows, save the one set in the door of each chamber—­we located for a brief season, and exchanged the liveliest compliments with the lodgers at the extreme ends of the building.  A sneeze in the dead of night aroused the house; and during one of the panics which were likely to follow, I peremptorily departed, and found shelter at last in the large square chamber of an adobe dwelling, the hospitable abode of one of the first families of Monterey.  Broad verandas surrounded us on four sides; the windows sunk in the thick walls had seats deep enough to hold me and my lap tablet full in the sunshine—­whenever it leaked through the fog.