American flag flew over the Custom House of Mon-
terey, there is reason to believe that Russian aggres-
sion under the leadership of so energetic and re-
sourceful a spirit as Nicolai Petrovich de Rezanov
was in a fair way to make history first in the New
Albion of Drake and the California of the incompe-
tent Spaniard.



V

The Russians were to call at the house of the Com-
mandante on their way to the Mission, and Concha
herself made the chocolate with which they were
to be detained for another hour. It was another spark-
ling morning, one of the few that came between
winter and summer, summer and winter, and made
even this bleak peninsula a land of enchantment be-
fore the cold winds took the sand hills up by their
foundations and drove them down to Yerba Buena,
submerging the battery and every green thing by
the way; or the great fogs rolled down from the
tule lands of the north and in from the sea, making
the shivering San Franciscan forget that not ten
miles away the sun was as prodigal as youth. For
a few weeks San Francisco had her springtime,
when the days were warm and the air of a wonder-
ful lightness and brightness, the atmosphere so clear
that the flowers might be seen on the islands, when