On going to our rooms, we hear the carpenters at work, and see the florists bringing in their wares. The dancing-room being next to my apartment, I can see the finery from my door. A wooden shed, about the length of a country barn, with bare benches set against white-washed walls, is brightened here and there by a bunch of ribbon, a wreath of paper flowers, and something like a score of lights. One fiddle and one concertina make the orchestra. On the other side, there are girls in brilliant colours, in the ripple of whose laughter you catch the music which a young man prefers to any sight or sound below the spheres.

As I am passing down the room, conducting two señoras to their seats, a young girl, slipping behind me, smashes an eggshell on my pate; an eggshell from which the meat has been drawn, and the inside filled with tinsel and coloured paper, cut so fine as to fall like snow. A peal of laughter greets the girl's success. It is a challenge. When a shell is broken on your head, you have the right to claim a dance, during which you may crush your cascaron among the damsel's curls. A romp ensues. If señorita slips away, señor follows in pursuit. A

game of hide and seek is played, and shells get broken on balconies. As night comes on, the ladies press the fun, not only for the laughter, but because the tinsel adds a beauty to their dull black curls and lustrous eyes. By supper-time the riot runs so high that dons and caballeros can hardly keep their pride of port.

The supper is a thing to match the ball. We march in grandly, to a feast of thin soup, stale cakes, pork sandwiches, and cold tea. Yet caballeros and señoras drink and smile, and try to make believe that all this shabby finery is a grand affair. For is it not their cascarone ball?

Let no man jest at these bare walls, these paper flowers, these guttering candles, and this banquet of cakes and nuts, washed down with tea; for after supper, the dons and caballeros steal away to whisky bars, where three or four doses of their fire-water serve to wake the demons that sleep in every Each don and caballero wears a

Mexican eye.

poignard in his vest.

'Good Catholics, true caballeros,' whispers Don Mariano, as he bows adieu; 'you see we keep the festivals of our faith!'

'Good Catholic first, true caballero second, eh Don Mariano?'

'Yes, Señor; a mixed blood may be Mexican first, Catholic afterwards; a Spanish gentleman will always put his religion first. You know our saying: la religion es la creencia, la creencia pertenece al espíritu, y al espíritu nadie lo manda.'

Living like a big chief, in the fashion of his country, Don Mariano has squandered not a little of his vast estate on what are called his pleasures. He has a lust for building towns. Besides his city of Vallejo, he has built the port and city of Benecia, named in honour of a lovely and neglected wife. His ranches sink in piles, his sheep-runs melt into public squares; but more than all, his property slips away from him in courts of law. A stranger challenges his title, and a judge reviews his grant. All Mexicans are fond of law, and Don Mariano never goes into some court except to lose some part of his estate. Don Mariano is a type, not only of the Lost Capital, but the Retiring Race.

CHAPTER VI.

WHITE CONQUERORS.

GUESS you'll say here's a place,' whispers Colonel Brown, a settler in these parts. If this valley had a little more rain, a little more soil, and a little less sun and wind, it would be a place! You bet?'

Leaving the open sewers and pretty balconies of Monterey behind, we cross the amber dunes, and twenty miles from the sea we strike the Rio Salinas, near the base of Monte Toro, and a few steps farther, on a creek called Sanjon del Alisal, we find a new city, called Salinas, rising from the earth.

Nine years ago the Rio Salinas flowed through a desert, over which wild deer and yet wilder herdsmen roved in search of grass and pools. The soil was dry, the herbage scant. Bears, foxes, and coyotes disputed every ravine with the hunters. Ducks and widgeons covered the lagunes and creeks. A trapper's gun was rarely heard among these hills,

and save the ruins of an old Mission-house at Soledad, no trace of civil life was found between the heights of Monte Toro and the summits of Gavilano range.

To-day, a pretty English town, with banks, hotels, and churches, greets you on the bridge of Sanjon del Alisal. A main street, broad, well-paved and neatly built, runs out for nearly half a mile. Unlike the timber-sheds of Monterey, the stores and banks of this new town are built of brick, striking, as one may say, their roots into the earth. A fine hotel adorns the principal street, every shop in which is stocked with new and useful things, just like a shop in Broadway or the Strand. You buy the latest patterns in hats and coats, in steam-ploughs and grass-rollers, in pump-handles and waterwheels. Salinas has her journals, her lending-libraries, her public schools. A jail has just been opened, for the herdsmen of the district are unruly, and the prison of San Jose is a long way off. Pigeons flutter in the roadways, lending to the town an air of poetry and peace. Some offshoots flow from Main Street into open fields, in which Swiss-like châlets nestle in the midst of peaches, grapes, and figs. One church