of fresh cut oranges and
bananas and plantains. They were for us to take on the steamer and we
could enjoy them as they ripened on the way. We received marked
attention from the men at every station. Women coming to California
were a novelty, and when they learned we were all of one family of the
American Padre, they were still more gracious. So we journeyed for ten
days, each day bringing forth some new feature. At night we left the
boats and slept in the bungalows perched high in the air, and to
reach them we climbed steps cut out in a large log placed at the
opening. There was only one large room and we all slept on the floor,
rolled in our blankets. We got but little sleep because of the noise
from below made by Americans and Spaniards playing cards and smoking
cigarettes and Spanish girls dancing as the men thrummed on the
guitars. The Spaniards carried long knives at their sides and pistols
in their belts, wore wide straw hats and red sashes, black trousers
slashed down the side and trimmed with rows of bright buttons.
High-heeled boots and spurs finished the unique garb. The women wore a
white chemise and white petticoat and slippers. Their black hair,
plaited in two braids, and a silk shawl thrown gracefully over their
heads and a fan, which is an indispensable article to a Spanish lady,
completed the toilet. Nothing but troubled sleep came to our relief
during these days. Fear of the Spaniards and the movements of the
lizards on the rafters and walls, with now and then a tarantula, made
rest almost impossible. At last we had only one day more, the tenth
day. We had gotten familiar with the different scenes, the waving
palms, the trailing vines where the monkeys climbed or hung by their
tails and chattered in their own way. The scarlet lingawacha, or
tongue plant, hung in graceful lengths and brightened the varied
colored green in the background. Innumerable families of parrots
talked and screamed from the branches. Bananas and orange trees
everywhere interspersed with tall cocoanut palms, the large and small
alligators basking in the sun on the sand were pictures never to be
forgotten. The natives in their peculiar dress, the fandango at night,
the graceful twirl of the Spanish waltz put the life touch to the
picture that comes to me today at the age of seventy-five as it was in
those days when I experienced, a girl of fifteen, all the discomforts
of travel from Cincinnati to California.

It was about 4 o'clo