IV

MONTEREY THE FIRST CAPITAL

Monterey is the dream that came true; the lost place that was found-the place that was and that is again to be. It was once the port o'ships, the trader's mecca, the pilgrim's shrine, the wanderer's lodestone. Wealth decked it with jewels, fashion plumed it with gay feathers. It rose, as in a day, from savage squalor to voluptuous civilization. From its pine-clad hills was swung the star of a new empire; in its valleys of oak and from its shores of cypress were chanted the Te Deums of destiny. Its name was strung in litanies at the foot of Christ's cross and rung to the music of battles from clashing swords. But there came a day when the head that wore a crown was in the dust, when rags alone were left of much purple and fine linen; when all that remained of Monterey was memory and that wondrous beauty which was the gift of God and which only the hand of God can take away.

In no other place of all the world was history made with a rapidity more amazing. Under the sunglinted waters of the Bay of Monterey and in the bosom of the serranos which close it in is buried a past as romantic as that which is whispered by the dead leaves of Vallambrosa, stirred by the winds of summer when the moon is low. Into three-quarters of a century of life and mastery it crowded the history of an age. But its glory did not pass to come

no more.

Long before the Anglo-Saxon reared his first rooftree on the bleak shores of the Atlantic in the New

World, Monterey watched the white man's buffeted sail and felt the touch of his hand. Cabrillo steered his prows against her guardian headlands, fighting his way against wind and wave to Mendocino in 1542, that time he doubled back to die on San Miguel amid the isles of Santa Barbara. In 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino anchored his ships in the harbor, naming it in honor of his patron, Gaspar de Zuniga, Compt de Monterey, then the viceroy of Mexico. Under an oak tree that stood at the head of a little cove in the bay, the priests of Vizcaino's expedition reared a cross and sang the Mass, then sailed away, leaving the spot to its ancient silences. For one hundred sixty-six years the foot of no civilized man came again to Monterey.

But from the hour that Vizcaino returned to Mexico with the report of his voyages, Monterey fastened itself upon the imagination of New Spain and of old Spain as well. It became the ultima thule of the Conquistadore's dreams. The mind made pictures of the noble harbor set deep within the swinging hills, the sun dancing upon its waters, and the green of wild pastures, lush and lovely, closing it in. They thought the fabled Seven Cities must lie near it and that it would lead them to the towers of gold, the lure of which haunted the broken heart of the grim conqueror, Cortes himself, to the last breath of life that warmed him. Yet the years passed-a century and near another-before there came again a sail to Monterey. Then, in 1769, the expedition that had set out from La Paz under the authority of Galvez, the Visitador-General of Mexico, landed at San Diego and took possession of California in the name of the King of Spain. But the expedition had hardly reared the Cross at San Diego before the search for storied Monterey began. And a weary search it was, beating

its often hopeless trails and pathways over both land and sea.

At last, however, on May 31, 1770, the good ship San Antonio, commanded by Capt. Juan Perez, anchored in the bright harbor. The lost was found again; the weary quest was at an end, and, from that hour, Monterey was destined to take her place among the civilized communities of the world. Word of the

great and long-looked-for success was at once forwarded to the City of Mexico, where the joy of the authorities and the people was boundless. From lip to lip throughout the streets of the capital sped the great news. "Monterey has been found; the flag of the King is flying over it," rang forth the wild cry of victory and exultation. The news did not reach the capital of Mexico until August, but that was quick work for those days when even the telegraph had not yet been dreamed of. It was indeed a glad day. The bells of the cathedral burst forth in peal after peal of gladness. Galvez, the Visitador-General, was in ecstacies over the success of the expedition he had sent out upon strange seas and into still stranger lands. The Viceroy, the Marquis de la Croix, was congratulated on every hand. Next day a solemn Mass of thanksgiving was celebrated in the cathedral, attended by all the high dignitaries, the military and civic authorities and the whole people.

An account of the discovery was printed and distributed broadcast among the populace, creating the most intense excitement. An official statement of the event was made out and forwarded to Spain, relating the fact that the throne of Castile and Leon had for two centuries sent vessels to the coast of California, terminating at last in the establishment of the Presidio and Mission of San Carlos at Monterey, June 3, 1770.

The ceremony of taking possession of Monterey

for Spain, on June 3, 1770, took place under the same oak tree where Sebastian Vizcaino had camped and erected a cross 167 years before, namely, in the year 1602. There are trees in many parts of the world that have histories, but none has a story more fascinating than this tree, now called the "Serra Tree." It was a magnificent specimen of the live oak for which Monterey is still famed, as, let us hope, it will ever be. It grew at the end of a little cove or estuary of the bay at the present entrance to the Presidio. In its place is a costly, handsome and wellmeaning granite cross, erected by a generous-hearted lover of Monterey and her past. But how a lifeless stone can take the place of a living tree, it were hard to say.

In the tumble and wreck and ruin of once great days there came to Monterey some who neither understood nor revered the past and its mighty memories. They built a culvert around the old tree, walling it with stone that yet did not keep from it the seeds of death. And so, one day, a patriarch of a noble tribe withered and died and became an eyesore on the ancient highway. Then when the man came along with the stone cross, the tree was ruthlessly torn out and flung heedlessly-and with what ingratitude only the spirits of the dead can know-into the waters of the bay.

But just as the thievish tides were about to run away with the grand old trunk, still mighty in death, carrying it to the hungry and engulfing sea, two men of Monterey put out upon a scow and fought with the tides for the precious burden. With grappling hooks, and after an heroic struggle, the dead patriarch was brought to shore and carried in a cart to the Royal Chapel of San Carlos in the town. There it was embedded in cement and treated to a chemical process