The neighbourhood at least is well selected. The Pacific booms in
front. Westward is Point Pinos, with the lighthouse in a
wilderness of sand, where you will find the lightkeeper playing the
piano, making models and bows and arrows, studying dawn and sunrise
in amateur oil-painting, and with a dozen other elegant pursuits
and interests to surprise his brave, old-country rivals. To the
east, and still nearer, you will come upon a space of open down, a
hamlet, a haven among rocks, a world of surge and screaming sea-
gulls. Such scenes are very similar in different climates; they
appear homely to the eyes of all; to me this was like a dozen spots
in Scotland. And yet the boats that ride in the haven are of
strange outlandish design; and, if you walk into the hamlet, you
will behold costumes and faces and hear a tongue that are
unfamiliar to the memory. The joss-stick burns, the opium pipe is
smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of coloured paper -
prayers, you would say, that had somehow missed their destination -
and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the
sheet, writes home the news of Monterey to the Celestial Empire.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93