The original custom-house—­there was no mistaking it, for it was founded on a rock—­overhung the sea, while the waves broke gently at its base, and rows of sea-gulls sat solemnly on the skeletons of stranded whales scattered along the beach.  A Captain Lambert dwelt on the first floor of the building; a goat fed in the large hall—­it bore the complexion of a stable—­where once the fashionable element tripped the light fantastic toe.  In those days the first theatre in the State was opened with brilliant success, and the now long-forgotten Binghams appeared in that long-forgotten drama, “Putnam, or the Lion Son of ’76.”  The never-to-be-discourteously-mentioned years of our pioneers, ’49 and ’50, “were memorable eras in the Thespian records of Monterey,” says the guide-book.  They were indeed; for Lieutenant Derby, known to the literary world as “John Phoenix” and “Squibob,” was one of the leading spirits of the stage.  But the Thespian records came to an untimely end, and it must be confessed that Monterey no longer tempts the widely strolling player.

I saw her in decay, the once flourishing capital.  The old convent was windowless, and its halls half filled with hay; the barracks and the calaboose, inglorious ruins; the Block House and the Fort, mere shadows of their former selves.  As for Colton Hall—­the town-hall, named in honor of its builder, the first alcalde,—­it is a modern-looking structure, that scarcely harmonizes with the picturesque adobes that surround it.  Colton said of it:  “It has been erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of the convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers.  The scheme was regarded with incredulity by many; but the building is finished, and the citizens have assembled in it, and christened it after my name, which will go down to posterity with the odor of gamblers, convicts and tipplers.”  Bless his heart! he need not have worried himself.  No one seems to know or care how the building was constructed; and as for the name it bears, it is as savory as any.

The church was built in 1794, and dedicated as the parish church in 1834, when the missions were secularized and Carmelo abandoned.  It is the most interesting structure in the town.  Much of the furniture of the old mission is preserved here:  the holy vessels beaten out of solid silver; rude but not unattractive paintings by nameless artists—­perhaps by the friars themselves,—­landmarks of a crusade that was gloriously successful, but the records of which are fading from the face of the earth.

Doubtless the natives who had flourished under the nourishing care of the mission in its palmy days, wagged their heads wittingly when the brig Natalia met her fate.  Tradition says Napoleon I. made his escape from Elba on that brig.  It was by the Natalia that Hijar, Director of Colonization, arrived for the purpose of secularizing the missions; and his scheme was soon accomplished.  But the winds blew, and the waves rose and beat upon the little brig, and laid her bones in the sands of Monterey.  It is whispered that when the sea is still and the water clear, and the tide very, very low, one may catch faint glimpses of the skeleton of the Natalia swathed in its shroud of weeds.