full of goats and everything speaks of Spanish-Americanism.
A woman with lustrous black hair and eyes, and oval, olive-hued face, comes out with her black shawl or rebosa, folded Andalusian fashion around her head and shoulders. The Moors left those eyes, and that oval face and tawny-olive skin, in Spain; but the little girl who follows her has a fairer complexion, a sharper-cut face, and light-brown hair. Thus, little by little, we are conquering Spanish-America. At a little roadside grocery a whole family of Mexican or native Californians are in attendance. I called for a real's (ten cents) worth of apples, and they weighed me out four pounds; one holding the scales, another putting in the apples in a pail which a third held, while the rest looked on. It took the whole family to sell just ten apples; but such is "el costumbre del pais, señor"—the custom of the country, sir; and who is to commit the sacrilege of innovation?
Two miles above Spanish Town, at the toll-gate, is a small, neat farm, owned by an intelligent American, past the meridian of life. As he came out to take the toll, I engaged him in conversation. He has one hundred and sixty acres, nearly one hundred of which are under cultivation. In the valley he raises beans, onions, fruit, etc., and on the hill-tops he has his early potato-fields, from which he sends to market the finest potatoes in December, January and February, after the lowland crops have become "old" and less salable. He has three acres of strawberries in full bearing. These he irrigates,
