Inshore, a tract of sandhills borders on the beach. Here and there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts the birds and hunters. A rough, undergrowth partially conceals the sand. The crouching, hardy, live-oaks flourish singly or in thickets⁠—the kind of wood for murderers to crawl among⁠—and here and there the skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills with a floor of turf and long aisles of pine trees hung with Spaniard’s Beard. Through this quaint desert the railway cars drew near to Monterey from the junction at Salinas City⁠—though that and so many other things are now forever altered⁠—and it was from here that you had the first view of the old township lying in the sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily around it from the sea.