Part 7 (1/2)

Pinola is parched corn ground fine between stones, eaten with milk.

Pinoche, chopped English walnuts cooked in brown sugar--a nice candy.

Rancho, a farm; and rio, river.

Everything is a ranch out here; the word in the minds of many stands for home. A little four-year-old boy was overheard praying the other day that when he died the Lord would take him to His ranch.

Sacramento is the sacrament.

Sierra, saw-toothed; an earthquake is a temblor.

San and Santa, the masculine and feminine form of saint.

As the men who laid out a part of New York evidently travelled with a cla.s.sical dictionary, and named the towns from that, as Rome, Syracuse, Palmyra, Utica, so the devout Spanish explorer named the places where he halted by the name of the saint whose name was on the church calendar for that day. And we have San Diego (St. James), San Juan (St. John), San Luis, San Jose, San Pedro, Santa Inez, Santa Maria, Santa Clara, and, best of all, Santa Barbara, to which town we are now going.

The Mexican dialect furnishes words which are now permanently incorporated in our common speech; as:

Adobe, sun-dried brick.

Canon, gorge.

Tules, rush or water-weed. (Bret Harte's _Apostle of the Tules_.)

Bonanza, originally _fair weather at sea_, now _good fortune in mining_.

Fandango, dance of the people.

Corral, a place to collect stock. (A farmer of the West never says cow-pen, or barnyard, or farmyard, but corral.)

Cascarones, egg-sh.e.l.ls filled with finely cut gold or silver paper, or perfumes, broken on head of young man, in friendly banter or challenge to a dance.

Burro, small kind of donkey.

Broncho, wild, untamed animal.

Sombrero, hat.

Rebozo, scarf.

Serape, blanket.

Lariat, rawhide rope.

Hacienda, estate.

While we are rattling along there is so little to see until we reach the ocean, that we may as well be recalling a few more facts worth knowing. At Riverside I learned that the leaf of the orange tree was larger when it first came out than later. It grows smaller as it matures. And most people say that the fig tree has no blossom, the fruit coming right out of the branch. But there is a blossom, and you have to cut the fruit open to find it. Just split a young fig in two and notice the perfect blossom in the centre.

They say it takes two Eastern men to believe a Californian, but it only takes one Eastern woman to tell true stories which do seem almost too big for belief. One man got lost in a mustard field, and he was on horseback too.