I have seen as many as six men and a boy standing upon one of the half-dozen street corners of the town, watching, with a surprise that bordered upon impertinence, a white pilgrim from San Francisco in an ulster, innocently taking his way through the otherwise deserted streets. The ulster was perhaps the chief object of interest. I have seen three or four citizens sitting in a row, on a fence, like so many rooks,--and sitting there for hours, as if waiting for something. For what, pray? For the demented squaw, who revolved about the place, and slept out of doors in all weathers, and muttered to herself incessantly while she went to and fro, day after day, seeking the rest she could not hope for this side the grave? Or for Murillo, the Indian, impudent though harmless, full of fancies and fire-water? Or for the return of the whale-boats, with their beautiful lateen-sails? Or for the gathering of the Neapolitan fishermen down under the old Custom House, where they sat at evening looking off upon the Bay, and perchance dreaming of Italy and all that enchanted coast? Or for the rains that poured their sudden and swift rivulets down the wooded slopes and filled the gorges that gutted some of the streets? Was it the love of nature, or a belief in fatalism, or sheer laziness, I wonder, that preserved to Monterey those washouts, from two to five feet in depth, that were sometimes in the very middle of the streets, and impassable save by an improvised bridge--a single plank? Ah me! It is an ungracious task to prick the bubble reputation, had I not been dazzled with dreams of Monterey from my youth up! Was I piqued when I, then a citizen of San Francisco--one of the three hundred thousand,--when I read in "The Handbook of Monterey" these lines: "San Francisco is not too firmly fixed to fear the competition of Monterey"? Well, I may as well confess myself a false prophet. The town fell into the hands of Croesus, and straightway lost its identity. It is now a fashionable resort, and likely to remain one for some years to come. Where now can one look for the privacy of old? Then, if one wished to forget the world, he drove through a wilderness to Cypress Point. Now 'tis a perpetual picnic ground, and its fastnesses are threaded by a drive which is one of the features of Del Monte Hotel life. It was solemn enough of yore. The gaunt trees were hung with funereal mosses; they had huge elbows and shoulders, and long, thin arms, with skeleton fingers at the ends of them, that bore knots that looked like heads and faces such as Doré portrayed in his fantastic illustrations. They were like giants transformed,--they are still, no doubt; for the tide of fashion is not likely to prevail against them.