1849 Letter from Hugo Reid to Don Abel Stearn
A paragraph in a letter from Hugo Reid in Northern California to Don Abel Stearn in Los Angeles, speaking of the “backwoods women” he met at the gold mines in 1849.
“However, by post I will give you an idea of life in the mines and how our American backwoods women smoke pipes! I saw one lady there who had sucked all of the teeth out of her head smoking, and left the most curious animal tubes remaining you ever saw. It was a carnivorous pandoric flute, and the old woman on sighing produced a sound like a harmonica.”
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