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 _débris_ 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 grew the obese roses of the far West, that fairly burst upon their stem. Often did I exclaim: "O, for a delicate blossom, whose exquisite breath savors not of the mold, and whose sensitive petals are wafted down the invisible currents of the wind like a fairy flotilla!" Beyond that garden, beyond the roofs of this town, stretched the yellow sand-dunes; and in the distance towered the mountains, painted with changeful lights. My other window looked down the long, lonesome street to the blue Bay and the faint outline of the coast range beyond it.