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.
Ah, there was richness! Perennial groves, dazzling white cottages
snow-flaking them with beauty; a beach with afternoon bathers; and two
straggling piers that had waded out into deep water and stuck fast in
the mud. A stroll through Santa Cruz does not dissipate the enchantment
usually borrowed from usurious distance; and the two-hours'-roll in the
deep furrows of the Bay, that the pilgrim to Monterey must suffer, is
apt to make him regret he left that pleasant port in the hope of finding
something pleasanter on the dim opposite shore.
We re-embarked for Monterey at dusk, when the distant horn of the Bay
was totally obscured. It is seldom more than a half-imagined point,
jutting out into a haze between two shades of blue. Stars watched over
us,--sharp, clear stars, such as flare a little when the wind blows. But
the wind was not blowing for us. Showers of sparks spangled the
crape-like folds of smoke that trailed after us; the engine labored in
the hold, and the sea heaved as it is always heaving in that wide-open
Bay.
In an hour we steamed into a fog-bank, so dense that even the head-light
of our ship was as a glowworm; and from that moment until we had come
within sound of voices on the undiscovered shore, it was all like a
voyage in the clouds. Whistles blew, bells rang, men shouted, and then
we listened with hungry ears. A whistle answered us from shore--a
piercing human whistle. Dim lights burned through the fog. We advanced
with fearful caution; and while voices out of the air were greeting us,
almost before we had got our reckoning, we drifted up under a dark pier,
on which ghastly figures seemed to be floating to and fro, bidding us
all-hail. And then and there the freedom of the city was extended to us,
saturated with salt-sea mist. Probably six times in ten the voyager
approaches Monterey in precisely this fashion. 'Tis true! 'Tis pity!
Having been hoisted up out of our ship--the tide was exceeding low and
the dock high; having been embraced in turn by friends who had soaked
for an hour and a half on that desolate pier-head--for our ship was
belated, groping her way in the fog,--we were taken by the hand and led
cautiously into the sand-fields that lie between the city and the sea.
Of course our plans had all miscarried. Our Bachelors' Hall fell with a
dull thud when we heard that the chief bachelor had turned benedict
three days before. But he was present with his bride, and he knew of a
haunt that would compensate us for all loss or disappointment. We
crossed the desert nursing a faint hope. We threaded one or two wide,
weedy, silent streets; not a soul was visible, though it was but nine
in the evening,--which was not to be wondered at, since the town was
divided against itself: the one half slept, the other half still sat
upon the pier, making a night of it; for old Monterey had but one shock
that betrayed it into some show of human weakness. The cause was the
Steam Navigation Co. The effect was a fatal fondness for tendering a
public reception to all steamers arriving from foreign ports, after
their sometimes tempestuous passages of from eight to ten hours. This
insured the inhabitants a more or less festive night about once every
week or ten days.
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 _débris_ 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.
Two of these windows opened upon a sandy street, beyond which was a
tangled garden of cacti and hollyhock and sunflowers, with a great wall
about it; but I could look over the wall and enjoy the privacy of that
sweet haunt. In that cloistered garden grew the obese roses of the far
West, that fairly burst upon their stem. Often did I exclaim: "O, for a
delicate blossom, whose exquisite breath savors not of the mold, and
whose sensitive petals are wafted down the invisible currents of the
wind like a fairy flotilla!" Beyond that garden, beyond the roofs of
this town, stretched the yellow sand-dunes; and in the distance towered
the mountains, painted with changeful lights. My other window looked
down the long, lonesome street to the blue Bay and the faint outline of
the coast range beyond it.
Here I began to live; here I heard the harp-like tinkle of the first
piano brought to the California coast; here also the guitar was touched
skillfully by her grace the august lady of the house, who scorned the
English tongue--the more eloquent and rhythmical Spanish prevailed under
her roof. One of the members of the household was proud to recount the
history of the once brilliant capital of the State, and I listened by
the hour to a narrative that now reads to me like a fable.
In the year of Our Lord 1602, when Don Sebastian Viscaino--dispatched by
the Viceroy of Mexico, acting under instructions from Philip III. of
Spain--touched these shores, Mass was celebrated, the country taken
possession of in the name of the Spanish King, and the spot christened
Monterey in honor of Gaspar de Zuniga, Count of Monterey, Viceroy of
Mexico. In eighteen days Viscaino again set sail, and the silence of the
forest and the sea fell upon that lonely shore. That silence was
unbroken by the voice of the stranger for one hundred and sixty-six
years. Then Gaspar de Portola, Governor of Lower California,
re-discovered Monterey, erected a cross upon the shore, and went his
way.
In May, 1770, the final settlement took place. The packet _San Antonio_,
commanded by Don Juan Perez, came to anchor in the port, "which"--wrote
the leader of the expedition to Padre Francisco Palou--"is unadulterated
in any degree from what it was when visited by the expedition of Don
Sebastian Viscaino in 1602. After this"--the celebration of the Mass,
the _Salve_ to Our Lady, and a _Te Deum,_--"the officers took possession
of the country in the name of the King (Charles III.) our lord, whom God
preserve. We all dined together in a shady place on the beach; the whole
ceremony being accompanied by many volleys and salutes by the troops and
vessels."
When the _San Antonio_ returned to Mexico, it left at Monterey Padre
Junipero Serra and five other priests, Lieutenant Pedro Fages and thirty
soldiers. The settlement was at once made capital of Alta California,
and Portola appointed the first governor. The Presidio (an enclosure
about three hundred yards square, containing a chapel, store-houses,
offices, residences, and a barracks) was the nucleus of the city; but
the mission was soon removed to a beautiful valley about six miles
distant, where there was more room, better shelter from the cold west
winds, and an unrivalled prospect. The valley is now known as Carmelo.
A fort was built upon a little hill commanding the settlement, and life
began in good earnest. What followed? Mexico threw off the Spanish yoke;
California was hence forth subject to Mexico alone. The news spread;
vessels gathered in the harbor, and enormous profits were realized on
the sale and shipment of the hides of wild cattle lately roaming upon a
thousand hills.
Then came gradual changes in the government; they culminated in 1846
when Captain Mervin, at the head of two hundred and fifty men, raised
the Stars and Stripes over Monterey, and a proclamation was read
declaring California a portion of the United States.
The Rev. Walter Colton, once chaplain of the United States frigate
_Congress_, was appointed first alcalde; and the result was the erection
of a stone courthouse, which was long the chief ornament of the town;
and, somewhat later, the publication of Alcalde Colton's highly
interesting volume, entitled "Three Years in California."