The town is yet asleep, and in truth it is never apt to be fairly
wide awake. The air is soft and balmy; the lovely Pacific, a
quivering, sparkling sheet of blue and grey and green flecked with
white foam, stretches far out until it is lost in the rosy sky; and
the mountains, all purple and pink and faint crimson and grey, stand
like sentinels along the shore. The scent of the roses, violets, and
mignonette mingled with the cloying fragrance of the datura is heavy
in the still air. The bending, willowy pepper-trees show myriad
bunches of yellow blossoms, crimson seed-berries, and fresh green
leaves, whose surface, not rain-washed for months, is as full of
colour as ever. The palm-trees rise without a branch, tall, slender,
and graceful, from the warmly generous earth, and spread at last, as
if tired of their straightness, into beautiful crowns of fans, which
sway toward each other with every breath of air. Innumerable
butterflies and humming-birds, in the hot, dazzling sunshine of
noonday, will be hovering over the beds of sweet purple heliotrope
and finding their way into the hearts of the passion-flowers, but as
yet not the faintest whirr of wings can be heard. Looking eastward
or westward, you see either brown foot-hills, or, a little later on,
emerald slopes whose vines hang heavy with the half-ripened grapes.

And hark! A silvery note strikes on the dewy stillness. It is the
mission bell ringing for morning mass; and if you look yonder you may
see the Franciscan friars going to prayers, with their loose grey
gowns, their girdle of rope, their sandaled feet, and their jingling
rosaries; and perhaps a Spanish senorita, with her trailing dress,
and black shawl loosely thrown over her head, from out the folds of
which her two dark eyes burn like gleaming fires. A solitary Mexican
gallops by, with gayly decorated saddle and heavily laden saddle-bags
hanging from it; perhaps he is taking home provisions to his wife and