This continued throughout the voyage, and I assert that "my ladies"
were of the most modest and best-behaved in the ship; but some time
after we had reached San Francisco one of our fellow-passengers
came to me and inquired if I personally knew Mrs. D---, with flaxen
tresses, who sang so sweetly for us, and who had come out under my
especial escort. I replied I did not, more than the chance
acquaintance of the voyage, and what she herself had told me, viz.,
that she expected to meet her husband, who lived about Mokelumne
Hill. He then informed me that she was a woman of the town.
Society in California was then decidedly mixed. In due season the
steamship Lewis got under weigh. She was a wooden ship, long and
narrow, bark-rigged, and a propeller; very slow, moving not over
eight miles an hour. We stopped at Acapulco, and, in eighteen
days, passed in sight of Point Pinoa at Monterey, and at the speed
we were traveling expected to reach San Francisco at 4 A. M. the
next day. The cabin passengers, as was usual, bought of the
steward some champagne and cigars, and we had a sort of ovation for
the captain, purser, and surgeon of the ship, who were all very
clever fellows, though they had a slow and poor ship.
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