The Tide Leaving Us, We Came To Anchor Near The Mouth Of The Bay,
Under A High And Beautifully Sloping
Hill, upon which herds of
hundreds and hundreds of red deer, and the stag, with his high
branching antlers, were
Bounding about, looking at us for a moment,
and then starting off, affrighted at the noises which we made for
the purpose of seeing the variety of their beautiful attitudes
and motions.
At midnight, the tide having turned, we hove up our anchor and
stood out of the bay, with a fine starry heaven above us, - the
first we had seen for weeks and weeks. Before the light northerly
winds, which blow here with the regularity of trades, we worked
slowly along, and made Point Año Nuevo, the northerly point of
the Bay of Monterey, on Monday afternoon. We spoke, going in,
the brig Diana, of the Sandwich Islands, from the North-west Coast,
last from Asitka. She was off the point at the same time with us,
but did not get in to the anchoring-ground until an hour or two
after us. It was ten o'clock on Tuesday morning when we came
to anchor. The town looked just as it did when I saw it last,
which was eleven months before, in the brig Pilgrim. The pretty
lawn on which it stands, as green as sun and rain could make it;
the pine wood on the south; the small river on the north side;
the houses, with their white plastered sides and red-tiled roofs,
dotted about on the green; the low, white presidio, with its soiled,
tri-colored flag flying, and the discordant din of drums and trumpets
for the noon parade; all brought up the scene we had witnessed here
with so much pleasure nearly a year before, when coming from a
long voyage, and our unprepossessing reception at Santa Barbara.
It seemed almost like coming to a home.
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