e excused herself
on the plea of indisposition for not rising, and it being one I surmised
she was a martyr to every year or so, I very readily coincided in
opinion, but in truth I found the Senora Mariqueta sensible,
good-humored, and what was far more notable, the mother of fourteen male
and five female children--making nineteen the sum of boys and girls
total, as she informed me herself, without putting me to the trouble of
counting the brood; and yet she numbered but seven and thirty years, in
the very prime of life, with the appearance of being again able to
perform equally astonishing exploits for the future. She named many of
her friends and relatives who had done wonders, but none who had
surpassed her in these infantile races. In Spain she would receive a
pension, be exempted from taxes and the militia. On being told this she
laughed heartily, and gave her full assent to any schemes undertaken in
California for the amelioration of the sex. Her husband, who chanced to
be absent, was a foreigner, but the whole family were highly
respectable, and universally esteemed by their fellow citizens. After an
hour's pleasant chat we took leave, with the promise on my part of
teaching the eldest daughter, Teresa, the Polka, for which I needed no
incentive, as she was extremely graceful and pretty.

CHAPTER X.

One morning, at break of day, I left Monterey for a tramp among the
hills; the natives by this time had become pacifically disposed, and
there were no serious apprehensions of getting a hide necklace thrown
over one's head, in shape of the unerring lasso, if perchance a Yankee
strayed too far from his quarters. The war was virtually ended in
California: there was no further hope for gold chains or wooden legs;
the glory had been reaped by the first comers; and I made the time and
shot fly together, ranging about the suburbs. With a fowling-piece on my
arm, and a carbine slung to the back of an attendant, we pursued a
tortuous path, through a gap in the hills, to the southward, and after a
four or five miles' walk we found ourselves at the Mission of Carmelo.
It is within a mile of the sea, protected by a neck of land, close to a
rapid clear stream of the same name. A quaint old church, falling to
decay, with crumbling tower and belfry, broken roofs, and long lines of
mud-built dwellings, all in ruins, is what remains of a once flourishing
and wealthy settlement. It still presents a picturesque appearance,
s