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The Awakening of Paredon Blanco 71 !

to the spot. This was the first time I had seen a daisy.
Miss Charlotte looked back and saw me standing in-
tently admiring the dear little flowers. She asked me what
was the matter, and my only explanation was “Pretty
pretty flowers!” That was all I could say in English.
She came back smiling and picked a little bunch of
them and put it in my hand. It made me very happy.
Further on we went by an acacia tree in bloom and I
thought it was a beautiful tree, and there were many tiny
acacia plants growing from seeds that had dropped from
the tree. Encouraged by Miss Charlotte’s kind liberality,
I asked her if she would please give me one of those little
trees. (She could understand Spanish a little.) They
were just about seven inches high. Very graciously, she
pulled up one, pressed wet soil on the root, and wrapped
a fig leaf around it. When my memorable visit was over,
I went running up the bluff to show mother my highly ap-
preciated presents. Then it occurred to me to plant the
little tree by the well, and it grew and grew and I gloried
in seeing it grow. It stood by the well over fifty years, to
my knowledge. When father’s homestead passed into
other hands, father asked the new owner to spare the tree,
as his daughter had planted it when she was a little child,
and the tree was spared.

In this short article I will try to portray as truly as
possible what I remember of the old home on the bluff
where I was born, so I will go back to the year 1864.
Despite the lapse of time, I will picture myself a small
child again standing on the high bluff, and run my eyes
once again, as of old, over that part of the valley that lay
between the east side of the Los Angeles River and Paredon
Blanco (White Bluff), later called Boyle Heights, now Hol-
lenbeck Heights. From there, I see the landscape as it
looked at that happy time, entirely covered with all shades
of green, from the delicate Nile to gorgeous emerald. I
could tell from the distance the kinds of fruit trees each
patch grew from the shade of the leaves. The vineyards
were at a distance, fields of corn, wheat, barley and alfalfa
gracefully waving in space. A large sugar-cane patch,