MONTEREY
CIUDAD DE AYER Y DE HOY

By HAROLD BOLCE

To know the story of Monterey, one must go back for a moment to the southern coast of Europe. There, on an island a day's sail from the land that later cradled a prodigy destined to make dynasties his playthings, there was born, in 1713, a boy who by pacific conquests was to perform a part no less significant than Napoleon's in determining the history of nations.

While the infant Bonaparte was listening, perhaps impatiently, to Corsican lullabies, Junípero Serra, a mendicant friar from Majorca, discovered, or rediscovered, on the far shores of this continent the supposedly vanished harbor of Monterey, and thereby marked the genesis of the movement that was finally to give the American republic a western frontage on the sea.

JUNÍPERO SERRA, FOUNDER OF MONTEREY.

But for this auspicious event and the stimulating effect on Spanish exploration it afterwards provoked, the great domain from San Diego to the Straits of Juan de Fuca would not to-day be rendering tribute to the Government at Washington. The western lines of the Louisiana Purchase would mark our farthermost frontier; the incredible hoard of California's roaring camps would be minted into sovereigns, shillings, rubles, imperials, or francs; no Pacific Squadron would have carried our flag to the gates of the East; and we would to-day be a hemmed-in nation, disputing our land boundaries with encroaching colonies of Europe, instead of a world power projecting canals to sever continents in the interest of our trade, and sailing our ships east and west across the seven seas.

The average tourist, viewing the adobe ruins of the Monterey presidio and recalling the futile guns of that crumbled fortress, does not dream of the place Monterey filled in the march of international events. Nor will the guide enlighten him as he takes him over the seagirt drive to Carmel and the cliffs of Point Lobos, for that profane, though picturesque historian omits even to say that Robert Louis Stevenson furnished the plan for this famous highway.

Some gleams of Monterey's immortal past illumine the reverent traveller who climbs the stone steps of Junípero's Mission at Carmel. He knows, then, vaguely, that he is exploring the venerable tomb of one of the great men of the world. And the irreverent guide, if asked, will indicate indifferently the spot on the gospel side of the sanctuary where rest the bones of this prophet and builder of empire, but before the hurrying train-catcher has returned to the Golden Gate he has ceased to reflect upon the incalculable debt America owes to this mendicant seer and colonizer who, in the name of God, St. Francis, and the King, added half a continent to the Crown of Spain, and, building better than he knew, established the western foundations of the republic that was to rise above Spanish and Mexican decay.

[ CARMEL MISSION (RESTORED).]