Page:Dawn and the Dons.pdf/147



FOR centuries, nature had been fashioning the Monterey peninsula into a fitting habitation for the beauty loving people who would be led by their heart’s desire to wander into this nae of dreams. Along the shores of its two bays, the ocean ebbed and flowed, fingering “the long keyboard of the beach” with the giant hands of a master musician. On its seaward side, rocky fortresses lifted undaunted heads to hurl defiance at the waves, born in the vastness of the Pacific, that never ceased to hammer and pound at the impregnable rock foundations.

Back from the sea, fringing the sandy stretches, rose gently undulating slopes, studded with sturdy oaks and pines, among whose shadows the California poppy, arrayed in the yellow uniform of the Spanish Don, creptback in springtime to bury its gold in the dark forest beyond. The uplands stretched back from the valleys to