extent. Ah me, I thought, how happy are our men, that we are not compelled to kiss such mouths! Do tell me, is it the mop which makes all your young ladies so entertaining? and believe me, señor, I love one of your pretty girls, but at every thought of the mop and her horrid dirty mouth I am taken aback." I assured the gentleman that this practice was confined to but few in our country, and I believed that every decent gentleman, both in Texas and the United States, looked upon it as far more odious than smoking. "I thank you, señor, for that fact," [138] says he, "for my sweetheart is in Philadelphia; I hope soon to visit her, and you now make me the more anxious to do so."

I confess I was fairly beaten by this intelligent gentleman; but while he found in me no apologist for the "snuff-dippers" and snuff-eaters of my own country, he failed to convince me that it was right for a pretty girl to smoke. Though I have ever been opposed to matrimonial divorces as most destructive to the happiest state of society, yet, if I were a judge or legislator, and the abused husband was to set forth in his petition that his better half smoked and mopped, if I could not upon principles of law entertain his application, I would sympathize in his wrongs.6

The third day after our arrival in the city of Monterey, Governor Ortega desired to see Colonel Fisher and myself at his quarters, he having been sick and confined to his house. He received us very courteously, and expressed his desire that we should be supplied with every comfort. Before leaving Monterey, we addressed the following notes to the governor and our good host Colonel Bermudez: