the Farallones by the egg-pickers of San Francisco. (Profits
_nil_.)"

And thus I fear, inasmuch as the Government proposes to guard the
sea-birds until a suitable license is secured by legitimate egg-pickers,
the price of gulls' eggs will go up in proportion, and hereafter we
shall have to look upon them as luxuries, and content ourselves with the
more modest and milder-flavored but undecorated products of the less
romantic barn-yard fowl.

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