Queen city of California! to me there is poetry in thy very name, and so would it be to all who delight in honesty, bonhommie, simplicity and the dolce far niente.

Notwithstanding the many solicitations we received, Padre Marini went to the convent, and I took up my quarters with the old governor.

All was new to me, and pleasant too, for I was not eighteen; and at such a time one has strange dreams and fancies of small waists, and pretty faces, smiling cunningly.  My mind had sometimes reverted to former scenes, when I had a mother and a sister.  I had sighed for a partner to dance or waltz with on the green, while our old servant was playing on his violin some antiquated en avant deux.

Now I had found all that, and a merry time I had of it.  True, the sack of doubloons helped me wonderfully.  Within a week after my arrival, I had a magnificent saddle embossed with silver, velvet breeches instead of cloth leggings, a hat and feathers, glossy pumps, red sash, velvet round-about, and the large cape or cloak, the eternal, and sometimes the only garment of a western Mexican grandee, in winter or in summer, by night or by day.  I say it was a merry time, and it agreed well with me.

Dance I did! and sing and court too.  My old travelling companion, the missionary, remonstrated a little, but the girls laughed at him, and I clearly pointed out to him that he was wrong.  If my English readers only knew what a sweet, pretty little thing is a Monterey girl, they would all pack up their wardrobes to go there and get married.  It would be a great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your love of coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions of what is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and render it as stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United States, with its nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one “a-b-c” school, and its immense stone jail, very considerately made large enough to contain its whole population.

The governor was General Morreno, an old soldier, of the genuine Castilian stock; proud of his blood, proud of his daughters, of himself, of his dignitaries, proud of everything—­but withal, he was benevolence and hospitality personified.  His house was open to all (that is to say, all who could boast of having white blood), and the time passed there in continual fiestas, in which pleasure succeeded to pleasure, music to dancing; courting with the eyes to courting with the lips, just as lemonade succeeded to wine, and creams to grapes and peaches.  But unhappily, nature made a mistake in our conformation, and, alas! man must repose from pleasure as he does from labour.  It is a great pity, for life is short, and repose is so much time lost; at least so thought I at eighteen.