Chapter 2

THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL

THE WOODS AND THE PACIFIC

THE Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than
General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less
important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a
soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the
mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend; and
Monterey itself is cosily ensconced beside the barb. Thus the
ancient capital of California faces across the bay, while the
Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her
left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town,
the long line of sea-beach trends north and north-west, and then
westward to enclose the bay. The waves which lap so quietly about
the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger in the distance; you
can see the breakers leaping high and white by day; at night, the
outline of the shore is traced in transparent silver by the
moonlight and the flying foam; and from all round, even in quiet
weather, the distant, thrilling roar of the Pacific hangs over the
coast and the adjacent country like smoke above a battle.

These long beaches are enticing to the idle man. It would be hard
to find a walk more solitary and at the same time more exciting to
the mind. Crowds of ducks and sea-gulls hover over the sea.
Sandpipers trot in and out by troops after the retiring waves,
trilling together in a chorus of infinitesimal song. Strange sea-
tangles, new to the European eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes
a whole whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poisoning the
wind, lie scattered here and there along the sands. The waves come
in slowly, vast and green, curve their translucent necks, and burst
with a surprising uproar, that runs, waxing and waning, up and down
the long key-board of the beach. The foam of these great ruins
mounts in an instant to the ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly
fleets back again, and is met and buried by the next breaker. The
interest is perpetually fresh. On no other coast that I know shall
you enjoy, in calm, sunny weather, such a spectacle of Ocean's
greatness, such beauty of changing colour, or such degrees of
thunder in the sound. The very air is more than usually salt by
this Homeric deep.

Inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the beach. Here and
there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts the birds and
hunters. A rough, undergrowth partially conceals the sand. The
crouching, hardy live-oaks flourish singly or in thickets - the
kind of wood for murderers to crawl among - and here and there the
skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills with a floor of
turf and long aisles of pine-trees hung with Spaniard's Beard.