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The people were divided into clericals and anti-clericals. A time of "storm and stress" hung over all. Wise in victory was Captain Miguel Peralta. His campaign against the foreigners marked the close of his service. Born in 1798, his family were lords of broad lands on the Alamedas of San Francisco Bay. He was sent to the city of Mexico and educated, serving in the army of the young republic.
A heartfelt welcome awaits the priest, a rapturous greeting for Don Miguel. The grassy Alamedas are starred with golden poppies. Roses adorn the garden walks of the young wife. Her pensive eyes have watched the valley anxiously for her lord. Padre Francisco hastens to consecrate the chapel. The Virgin Mother spreads her sainted arms on high. A school for the Indians soon occupies the priest.
Tired, weary of the crosses of fortune, he waits only to see the enemy's fires glittering from hill and cliff. With all his successes, the West has never been his home. Looking out on his far-sweeping alamedas, his thoughts turn fondly back to his native land. He is "going home to Dixie." The last weeks of Maxime Valois' stay at Lagunitas drift away. Old "Kaintuck" has plead in vain to go.
These joyous promenaders advanced with cries, sports, endless jests, through the fields of maize and of alfalfa, through the groves of banana, whose fruits hung to the ground; they traversed those beautiful alamedas, planted with willows, and forests of citron, and orange-trees, whose intoxicating perfumes were mingled with the wild fragrance from the mountains.
Was it from Washington these wonders were worked? As they march, unopposed, over the alamedas of San Joaquin, bearing toward the Coast Range, they pass under overhanging Mount Diablo. The Louisianian marvels at the sudden change of so many peaceful explorers into conquering invaders. Valois suspects Senator Benton of intrigues toward western conquest.
Dismounted in future years, these queer equestrian natures have never learned to fight the battle of life on foot. The law of absorption has taken their sad, swarthy visages out of the social arena. The cavalcade of Southerners sweeps over the alamedas. They dash across the Salinas and up to wooded Monterey. There the first constitutional convention assembles.
It has of course a bull-ring, enviously closed during our stay, and it has one of the pleasantest Alamedas and the best swept in Spain, where some nice boys are playing in the afternoon sun, and a gentleman, coming out of one of the villas bordering on it, is courteously interested in the two strangers whom he sees sitting on a bench beside the walk, with the leaves of the plane trees dropping round them in the still air.
Pigeons fluttered from the house-tops to the streets, or hovered about the plaza and bosky alamedas of poplar, pepper and eucalyptus trees in search of stray grains of corn.
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