24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 1-7, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com forests, which blazed up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. I suppose I must have been under the influence of Satan; for instead of plucking off a piece for my experiment, what should I do but walk up to a great pine-tree in a portion of the wood which had escaped so much as scorching, strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The tree went off simply like a rocket; in three seconds it was a roaring pillar of fire. Close by I could hear the shouts of those who were at work combating the original conflagration. I could see the wagon that had brought them tied to a live-oak in a piece of open; I could even catch the flash of an axe as it swung up through the underwood into the sunlight. Had any one observed the result of my experiment my neck was literally not worth a pinch of snuff; after a few minutes of passionate expostulation I should have been run up to a convenient bough. To die for faction is a common evil; But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. I have run repeatedly, but never as I ran that day. At night I went out of town, and there was my own particular fire, quite distinct from the other, and burning as I thought with even greater spirit. But it is the Pacific that exercises the most direct and obvious power upon the climate. At sunset, for months together, vast, wet, melancholy fogs arise and come shoreward from the ocean. From the hilltop above Monterey the scene is often noble, although it is always sad. The upper air is still bright with sunlight; a glow still rests upon the Gabelano Peak; but the fogs are in possession of the lower levels; they crawl in scarves among the sand-hills; they float, a little higher, in clouds of a gigantic size and often of a wild configuration; to the south, where they have struck the seaward shoulder of the mountains of Santa Lucia, they double back and spire up skyward like smoke. Where their shadow touches, color dies out of the world. The air grows chill and deadly as they advance. The tradewind freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all the windmills in Monterey are whirling and creaking and filling their cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. It takes but a little while till the invasion is complete. The sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt and frigid clouds; so to remain till day returns; and before the sun’s rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. And yet often when the fog is thickest and most chill, a few steps out of the town and up the slope, the night will be dry and warm and full of inland perfume. MONTEREY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY/PAT HATHAWAY COLLECTION MONTEREY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY/PAT HATHAWAY COLLECTION COURTESY CITY OF MONTEREY Above: A whale skeleton on display at Cypress Grove, just north of Point Lobos. Date unknown, but sometime after 1900. Right: Alvarado Street, near Casa Bonifacio; no definitive date, but believed to be circa 1890s. Below: Monterey’s first wooden house, circa 1879. It was built from wood imported from Australia. I have never been in any place that seemed so dreamlike.
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