ated 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Union; but it was somewhat out of date when we were ushered into it.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