Having arranged for my meals, my brother's next provision was for a sleeping-place. A small, unventilated room adjoining the store was selected; and there I rested on an ordinary cot furnished with a mattress, a pillow, and a pair of _frazadas_, or blankets. According to custom, whatever of these covers I required were taken each evening from stock, and the next morning they were returned to the shelves. Stores as well as houses were then almost without stoves or fireplaces; and as it grew colder, I found that the blankets gave little or no warmth. Indeed they were nothing more or less, notwithstanding their slight mixture of wool, than ordinary horse-blankets, on which account in winter I had to use five or six of them to enjoy any comfort whatever; and since I experienced difficulty in keeping them on the cot, I resorted at last to the device of tacking them down on one side. In 1853, free-and-easy customs were in vogue in Los Angeles, permitting people in the ordinary affairs of life to do practically as they pleased. There were few if any restrictions; and if circumscribing City ordinances existed--except, perhaps, those of 1850 which, while licensing gaming places, forbade the playing of cards on the street--I do not remember what they were. As was the case in San Francisco, neither saloons nor gambling places were limited by law, and there were no regulations for their management. As many persons as could make a living in this manner kept such establishments, which were conspicuous amid the sights of the town. Indeed, chief among the surprises greeting me during my first few weeks upon the Coast, the many and flourishing gambling dens caused me the greatest astonishment. Through the most popular of these districts, a newly-found friend escorted me on the evening of my arrival in Los Angeles. The quarter was known by the euphonious title of Calle de los Negros--Nigger Alley; and this alley was a thoroughfare not over forty feet wide which led from Aliso Street to the Plaza, an extent of just one unbroken block. At this period, there was a long adobe facing Los Angeles Street, having a covered platform or kind of veranda, about four feet from the ground, running its entire length. The building commenced at what was later Sanchez Street, and reached, in an easterly direction, to within forty feet, more or less, of the east side of Nigger Alley, then continuing north to the Plaza. This formed the westerly boundary, while a line of adobes on the other side of the street formed the easterly line. The structure first described, and which was demolished many years ago, later became the scene of the beginning of an awful massacre to which I shall refer in due season.