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 _debris_ 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