The wind had hauled ahead during the squall, and we were standing directly in for the point.  So, as soon as we had got all snug, we wore round and stood off again, and had the pleasant prospect of beating up to Monterey, a distance of a hundred miles, against a violent head wind.  Before night it began to rain; and we had five days of rainy, stormy weather, under close sail all the time, and were blown several hundred miles off the coast.  In the midst of this, we discovered that our fore topmast was sprung (which no doubt happened in the squall), and were obliged to send down the fore top-gallant-mast and carry as little sail as possible forward.  Our four passengers were dreadfully sea-sick, so that we saw little or nothing of them during the five days.  On the sixth day it cleared off, and the sun came out bright, but the wind and sea were still very high.  It was quite like being in mid-ocean again; no land for hundreds of miles, and the captain taking the sun every day at noon.  Our passengers now made their appearance, and I had for the first time the opportunity of seeing what a miserable and forlorn creature a sea-sick passenger is.  Since I had got over my own sickness, the third day from Boston, I had seen nothing but hale, hearty men, with their sea legs on, and able to go anywhere (for we had no passengers on our voyage out); and I will own there was a pleasant feeling of superiority in being able to walk the deck, and eat, and go aloft, and compare one’s self with two poor, miserable, pale creatures, staggering and shuffling about decks, or holding on and looking up with giddy heads, to see us climbing to the mast-heads, or sitting quietly at work on the ends of the lofty yards.  A well man at sea has little sympathy with one who is sea-sick; he is apt to be too conscious of a comparison which seems favorable to his own manhood.

After a few days we made the land at Point Pinos, which is the headland at the entrance of the bay of Monterey.  As we drew in and ran down the shore, we could distinguish well the face of the country, and found it better wooded than that to the southward of Point Conception.  In fact, as I afterwards discovered, Point Conception may be made the dividing-line between two different faces of the country.  As you go to the northward of the point, the country becomes more wooded, has a richer appearance, and is better supplied with water.  This is the case with Monterey, and still more so with San Francisco; while to the southward of the point, as at Santa Barbara, San Pedro, and particularly San Diego, there is very little wood, and the country has a naked, level appearance, though it is still fertile.