There were many verandas and pergolas, but this immense out-of-doors room had wide archways instead of pillars, curtained with white and purple passion flowers; and the creamy stucco of the house-wall, and the ruddy Spanish tiles, which already looked mellow with age, were half hidden with climbing roses and grapevines.

The shops and the landscapethe cosmopolitan crowd with its Babel of many tonguesthe great hotels, built of stucco in the nouveau-riche style so rasping to sensitive nervesthe striped awnings, the low balconies, the gaudy house-frontsall these our heroines looked at and commented on and revelled in with the joy of fresh and unspoiled youth.

The walls were of compact cobblestones, rough-laid and stuccoed with adobe and sand.

The houses are closely and compactly built of brick, usually of two stories, stuccoed on the outside and painted in a variety of colors.