The Texan town of El Paso had four hundred inhabitants, chiefly Mexicans. Its business men were Americans, but Spanish was the prevailing language. All the features were Mexican: low, flat adobe buildings, shading cottonwoods under which dusky, smoking women and swarthy children sold fruit, vegetables, and bread; habitual gambling universal, from the boys' game of pitching "quartillas" (three cent coins) to the great saloons where huge piles of silver dollars were staked at monte. In this little village, a hundred thousand dollars often changed hands in a single night through the potent agencies of monte and poker. There were only two or three American ladies; and most of the whites kept Mexican mistresses. All goods were brought on wagons from the Gulf of Mexico, and sold at an advance of three or four hundred per cent on Eastern prices.