They went ashore, at eventide, at that curious old Mexican town of Acapulco, and made themselves at home. They swung in the native hammocks; they supped at the native restaurant; they joined in a native fandago, and danced to the drumming of a guitar and the soft warbling of an uncommonly greasy "Greaser" and his sweetheart; they reverently entered the Cathedral and by reason of the dimness of the altar candles, mistook a ghastly, bleeding and wounded image of the Saviour, in a great glass case, for a genuine human being, newly murdered -- and then they were hurrying out again with very irreverent haste, when the deception was discovered. They bought long ten-cent strings of fancy sea-shells, and tricked themselves out like Indian chiefs hanging the shells about their necks rather for the sake of convenience in carrying them than for show, however. They warily avoided the bananas, pineapples, oranges, and such things, out of deference to the deadly Isthmian fevers, but they took kindly to a certain snow white flower, gifted with an entrancing fragrance and an unpronounceable name. They bore the clamorings of the dusky Mexican peddler girls, in the small market place, placidly; and when the ship's guns thundered a warning at night, they paddled out, well tired and got aboard just about the same moment the anchor did. 

Mark's Sea Voyage to San Francisco -- Pleasant Traveling Companions.  (The Chicago Republican, May 19, 1868)