came into the Gothic peninsula, bringing with them the
life and customs of a land that even then was old. So it has come to
pass that the traveler who sojourns here--having happily left behind
him on the farther side of the Rio Grande the bustle and confusion and
hurtful toil of this overpowering nineteenth century--very well can
believe himself transported back to that blessed time and country in
which the picturesque was ranked above the practical, and in which not
the least of human virtues was the virtue of repose.

Very beautiful is the site of Monterey: its noble flanking mountains,
the Silla and the Mitras, are east and west of it; its grand rampart,
the Sierra Madre, sweeps majestically from flank to flank to the
southward, and its outlying breastwork, a range of far-away blue
peaks, is seen mistily off in the north. And the city is in keeping
with its setting. The quaint, mysterious houses, inclosing sunny
gardens and tree-planted court-yards; the great cathedral where, in
the dusk of evening, at vespers, one may see each night new wonders,
Rembrandt-like, beautiful, in light and shade; the church of St.
Francis, and the old ruined church beside it--built, first of all, in
honor of the saint who had guided the Viceroy's commissioners so
well; the bowery _plaza_, with the great dolphin-fountain in its
centre, and the _plazuelas_, also with fountains and tree-clad; the
narrow streets; the old-time market-place, alive with groups of buyers
and sellers fit to make glad a painter's heart--all these picturesque
glories, together with many more, unite to make the perfect
picturesqueness of Monterey.

Yet Pancha, who had been born in Monterey, and who never had been but
a league away from it in the whole seventeen years of her life-time,
did not know that the city in which she lived was picturesque at all.
She did know, though, that she loved it very dearly. Quite the saddest
time that she had ever passed through was the week that she had spent
once at the Villa de Guadalupe--a league away to the eastward, at the
Silla's foot--with her Aunt Antonia. It was not that _tia_ Antonia was
not good to her, nor that life at the Villa de Guadalupe--as well
conducted a little town, be it said, with as quaint a little church,
as you will find in the whole State of Nuevo Leon--was not pleasant in
its way; but it was that she longed for her own home. And when, coming
back at last to the city, perched on the forward portion of _tio