Chapter XII: Part 12

Fresno, as seen from the railroad station, is not as inviting as it might be, and the thousands of travelers who pass by on the cars, headed farther south, can judge but little of the town and the district behind it. The country is so level, that the only way to get a good view of the country is to ascend some elevated building, the courthouse being the highest, and through its location the best suited building for the purpose. The early forenoon, before the noonday sun has acquired its full power, is the best time for this. Once up there, the view is decidedly magnificent, and more extensive than we had ever expected while below. Under us lies a lovely park of trees,--umbrella, elm, locust and fan palms, covering about four blocks. From it stretch the regular streets in all directions, lined by cottages as well as with costly dwelling-houses, shaded with stately trees of various kinds. The business portion of the town presents itself particularly well,--large and costly hotels, with comforts that the tired travelers enjoy so much, imposing bank blocks of brick and stone, with towers and ornamental roofs, solid structures with continuous lines of stores, etc., mark this part of town. For a mile in every direction the town stretches out, the center thickly built, the outskirts with sparsely scattered houses. Adjoining these the country begins,--vineyards as far as we can trace, groups of houses shaded by trees in different tints of green, while broken rows of endless poplars traverse the verdant plains and lose themselves in the distant horizon. The Sierra Nevada, with their snowclad summits, and the Coast Range in the west, cloudy and less distinct, form the frame for two sides of this attractive picture, while to the north and the south the open horizon, where sky and plains meet, limits the extensive view.

The street-car lines of Fresno do not run very far out in the country, and to see the latter we must procure a team. The colonies or settlements of small farms immediately join the town limits; we are thus with one step out in the country. On either side we see continuous rows of vineyards,--the leaves green and brilliant, the vines planted in squares and pruned low, with the branches trailing on the ground. To begin with, the houses stand closely, almost as in a village. As we get farther out there is a house on every twenty-acre farm, or every one-eighth of a mile. The cottages are neat and tasty, surrounded by shade trees, while rose-trees and shrubbery adorn the yard, and climbers shelter the verandas from the sun. At every step, almost, we pass teams going in various directions,--teams loaded with raisin boxes, teams with raisin trays, teams crowded with raisin pickers hurrying out to the vineyards, teams driven by raisin-growers or colonists generally, who rush to and from town to transact business connected with their one great industry. Everywhere is bustle and life; every one is in a hurry, as the grape-picking has begun, and the weather is favorable; no one has any time to lose. Some of the avenues are lined with elm-trees, others with fig-trees, with their luscious, drooping fruit, others again are bordered with evergreen and towering gums, with weeping branches and silvery bark. Every acre is carefully cultivated; there is room for only a few weeds. As far as we drive the same scene is everywhere, a scene like that in the outskirts of a populous city, where villas and pleasure grounds alternate with the cultivated acres, here those of the raisin-grower, and where every foot of ground is guarded with zealous care and made to produce to its utmost capacity. It is a pretty sight, a sight of thrift and intelligence, of enterprise and of success, of wealth and of refinement, found nowhere else outside of the fruit-growing and raisin-producing districts of California.

The raisin harvest has just begun; the vineyards are full of workers, grape-pickers are stooping by every vine, and are arranging the grapes on small square or oblong trays, large enough to be easily handled; teams with trucks are passing between the vines distributing the trays or piling them up in small, square stacks at every row. Some trays with their amber grapes lie flat on the ground in long continuous rows between the vines, others again are slightly raised so as to catch as much of the sun as possible. In some vineyards the laborers are turning the partially cured and dried raisins by placing one tray on top of another, and then turning them quickly over. In other places, again, the trays with the raisins already cured are stacked in low piles, so as to exclude the sun and air, and at other stacks a couple of men at each are busy assorting the grapes, and placing the various grades in different sweatboxes, large enough to hold one hundred pounds each. In every vineyard, large and small, we find the hands at work, and every one able and willing to do a day’s work is engaged to harvest the large crop. The most of the pickers are Chinese, at least in the larger vineyards, while in the smaller vineyards, where large gangs of men are not absolutely necessary, white men and boys are generally employed. The fame of the raisin section and the harvest has spread far and wide, and at picking time laborers gather from all parts of the State to take part in the work, and find remunerative wages at from $1.25 to $1.50 per day. The country now swarms with pickers of all nationalities,--Germans, Armenians, Chinese, Americans, Scandinavians, etc., and as the schools have closed in order to allow the children to take part in the work, boys of all sizes are frequently seen kneeling at the vines.

The crop this year is very heavy, many vines yielding two trays or even three, containing twenty pounds each, and, as the trays are generally placed in alternate rows between the vines, we see, as we pass, continuous lines of them filled with grapes in various stages of curing, from the green to the amber-colored and the dark of the fully-cured raisin. The aroma from the drying berries is noticeable, and the breeze is laden with the spicy and pronounced odor of the Muscatel raisins.

The average size of a colony lot is twenty acres. Many settlers own two or three lots, a few owning four or five. But it must not be understood that the whole of these lots are planted to raisin grapes. While most of the larger tracts are almost exclusively planted to raisin grapes, the smaller farms of twenty acres contain as a rule only a few acres of vines, the balance being occupied by alfalfa, berries, garden, fruit trees, and yard for houses and barns. From three to fifteen acres of raisin-vines are found on every twenty-acre farm; none is without its patch of raisin-vines. We step off and inspect many of the places, large as well as small. Magnificent vineyards are owned by T. C. White, one of the oldest and most successful vineyardists, and by other parties, only second in importance to his. The vineyard of the late Miss Austin is yet in its prime, the evergreen trees and hedges being as inviting as in days of old. New vineyards which have not yet come into bearing are seen on every side, while in places whole orchards or single rows of trees have yielded to the axe to be replaced by the better-paying raisin-vines.

Some of the best-paying and largest vineyards are found east of Fresno City. From the very outskirts of the city we pass through raisin vineyards, very few fields being planted with anything else. Near the town some vineyards have given place to town lots, and whole villages are growing up in the old vineyards. We pass by the large vineyard of Frank Ball, containing about 120 acres, all in vines except a small reserve for house, barn and alfalfa field. Adjoining on the same road is the Bretzner vineyard of forty odd acres, the vines loaded with grapes. We turn to the left and, passing the vineyards of Merriam and Reed, see on our left the magnificent Cory vineyard of eighty acres, bordered by a wonderfully beautiful row of umbrella trees, with crowns as even as veritable gigantic umbrellas, and through the foliage of which not a ray of light can penetrate. A little farther on, also to the left, is the Gordon vineyard, lined by fan palms and fig trees. A large sign across the main road announces that we now enter the Butler vineyard, the largest and most famous vineyard in the State, with its six hundred acres nearly all in vines,--the largest vineyard in one body and owned by one man in the world. Magnificent avenues of poplars, magnolias and fan palms stretch in various directions leading to the outbuildings, of which the packing and drying houses appear most prominently. Mr. Butler’s home is one of the most attractive, shaded by umbrella trees and fantastic fan palms, and surrounded by flowers and evergreens. From his vineyard alone over five hundred carloads of raisins have been shipped, the yearly product being over one hundred thousand boxes of raisins,--a thousand tons. The vineyard now swarms with laborers; the teams wait in long lines to load the ready raisin-boxes, while the spaces between the vines, as far as we can see, are almost covered with continuous rows of trays, all loaded with Muscat grapes in all stages of drying.

We travel constantly eastward; on both sides are raisin vineyards, large and small. The four hundred acres owned by the Fresno Vineyard Company are devoted to wine grapes, and large wineries and cellars built of adobe show the wealth and extensive business of the place. No vacant land anywhere, nothing but vineyards, the only breaks being groves of trees shading the homes, wine cellars or packing-houses of the proprietor. Farther to the north lies in an unbroken row the well-known Eisen vineyard, where the first raisins were made in this district, but where now principally wine is produced; the Nevada and Temperance Colonies, devoted mostly to raisins; the Pew, the Kennedy, the Forsyth, Woodworth’s, Duncan’s, Goodman’s and Backman’s raisin vineyards, all splendidly cared for and lined by fig trees. Of these the Forsyth vineyard deserves more than a passing notice, as it is more inviting to an hour’s rest than any other. Containing 160 acres, nearly all in vines, it is one of the best properties of the county. The place shows an uncommon taste and refinement, and is beautified by avenues of poplars and magnolias, by groves of acacia and umbrella trees, by palms and flowers, and by roses and climbing plants. A pond with its lilies, overhung by weeping willows and shaded by stately elms, is an unusual sight even in this county of abundant irrigation. The packing-houses and dryer all display a taste and practical arrangement hardly seen elsewhere. A climb to the top of the tank-house is well worth the trouble. The view becomes wonderfully enlarged; we overlook the level plains, all in vines, with houses and groves scattered about like islands in a sea,--no wild, unbroken country anywhere. In the distance is Fresno City, to the north the view is hemmed in by new vineyards and colonies,--a mass of trees and vines in straight and regular rows. The courteous owner conducts us through his packing-house and shows us how the bunches are placed in layers and carefully made to fit every corner in the box, how the boxes are covered with papers and artistic labels and finally made ready for the market. As we pass out we get a glimpse of the equalizing room, crowded to the ceiling with sweatboxes, in which the raisins assume an even and uniform moisture. And what luscious bunches they are, large, sweet, thin skinned and highly flavored. Malaga produces nothing better, and much not as good. And, when we are all through tasting and admiring, we are invited into the cosy and artistically furnished dwelling, where in the cool shade the lunch and the rest are as welcome and interesting as the vineyards and packing-houses outside.

As we turn again towards town, we pass the well-kept Goodman vineyard, after which we enter the large Barton vineyard, now partly owned by an English syndicate. The old 640 acres are nearly all in wine grapes, while several hundred acres of young raisin grapes have lately been added. One of the most extensive wine cellars in the State is found here, all kept in splendid shape,--hardly a speck of dirt, not a foot of waste land seen anywhere. The mansion is stately, situated on a small hill surrounded by fine groves of gum-trees, evergreen hedges and ornamental grounds. Should we care to go farther east, we might visit the Eisen vineyard, where the first Muscats were planted in the county. The famous avenue is half a mile long, and one of the most beautiful in the State, lined on both sides with blooming and beautiful oleanders alternating with poplars over a hundred feet high. We might also visit the Locan vineyard and orchard, and admire the orange-trees, which speak of what the country can produce in this line. But the time is too short; we might travel a week over this level but beautiful country, and every day, every minute, see something new and interesting among all these vineyards, with their packing-houses, and raisins exposed on trays to dry.

When we return to town, a visit to the packing-houses is one of the most interesting that can be made. Of these packing establishments Fresno has four or five, besides several in the colonies or in the larger vineyards. Three of these packing-houses are the largest in the State. The building of each one of them, though large, is full and overcrowded. Women at long tables pack the raisins in boxes, at other tables men weigh and assort raisins and take them out of the large sweatboxes in which they left the field. At some tables fancy packing is done, and women “face” the boxes by placing large selected raisins in rows on the top layers. At another table the raisin-boxes are covered with fine colored labels, then nailed and made ready for shipment. Some four hundred men and women are busy with this work under one roof, all earning wages of from one to two dollars a day each. We catch a glimpse of the equalizing room, where fifty tons of raisins are stored at one time for a week or more in order to become of even moisture, the floor being sometimes sprinkled with water to make the air sufficiently moist. As we go out we see the raisin-boxes already packed being loaded on cars and shipped east by the train-load, from four to six such raisin trains leaving every week, each train of from ten to twenty cars. On the other side of the packing-house is a continuous row of teams from the country, all loaded with raisins, brought by the country growers to the packers in town. It takes a gang of men to receive, weigh and unload them. In another department we see the large stemmer and grader, which runs by steam, and stems and assorts from thirty to forty tons per day, the clean and uniform raisins running out in a continuous stream, each grade in separate boxes. There is a restless activity on every side. The large raisin crop this year is very large; it must be handled in a few months, and every grower and packer is pushing the work to his utmost ability.

When we consider that most of the crop, which this year will reach five hundred thousand boxes, comes from the country immediately surrounding Fresno City, and that the San Joaquin valley is 250 miles long by 75 miles wide, almost all the land capable of being highly cultivated and of producing abundant crops of one thing or another, then alone can we realize what the future has in store for this wonderful valley, an agricultural empire in the very center of California.

FROM LOS ANGELES TO SANTA ANA.

We are fairly out of Los Angeles when the character of the scenery changes. The railroad here runs through one of the most fertile counties in the State,--the rich bottom lands being formed by the deposits of ages from the overflow of rivers and creeks from the Sierra Madre range. Not an acre of waste land is to be seen anywhere. Everything is clothed in the softest green, and only in the far distance are seen the hills and higher mountains of a brownish violet color, with the boldest outlines against the sky. A more diversified farming district is seldom seen. Orchards of prunes, walnuts, apples and figs are met with on either side of the track, here and there expansive vineyards with their characteristic green, or groves of straight and stately gums, like immense square blocks of verdure, planted all along from the nearest fields to the far distant hills. We pass in succession Ballona, Florence, Downey and Norwalk. The country around the two latter places seems especially attractive,--orchards as far as we can see, vineyards and native pastures. We pass villages and farmhouses, here and there a more pretentious villa, and, in some spots more lovely than the surrounding, many a mansion has been erected with luxury and taste.

We are soon in Orange county, and the scene changes some, the soil being, if possible, more fertile. We pass large orange groves of the deepest green, and immense fields of corn, squashes, pumpkins, peanuts, beans, and here and there walnut groves and plantations of young fig trees. Anaheim, Orange and Santa Ana come in quick succession; we are in the center of a raisin district of the very greatest interest. We can hardly realize the change. Not having been here since the boom, everything seems almost new. Santa Ana has grown to be the queen of the valley, and is undoubtedly, together with its two sister cities, Orange and Tustin, one of the most prosperous as well as lovely places to be found in the beautiful South. As we board the street car and ride up town from the depot, we realize the change even more. On every side are signs of wealth and refinement, of new ideas and new capital, both mostly imported from the East. Broad avenues one hundred feet wide, on either side, lined with trees of various kinds, cultivated fields immediately beyond, which, with cottages, villas and churches, all speak of a prosperous and intelligent population.

Santa Ana has her share of these stately structures. The Brunswick is as fine and substantial a building as any one could wish,--lofty and airy and of imposing architecture, large rooms and spacious halls. The boom that has been so much misjudged has done much more than settle up the country and bring capital. It has left behind substantial improvements and a taste for architecture, the arts and sciences, which can but be of permanent value to the country. It brought the country at one bound from its former frontier life and characteristics to a high degree of civilization and refinement. It brought capital, soil, climate and energy together in a way that is hardly found anywhere else out of our State. The boom is over, but the benefits of the boom are yet here, and are permanent.

Santa Ana, Orange and Tustin are like three precious stones in a ring of verdure. Only a few miles apart, they are like the villas on the outskirts of a central imaginary city, from which the wealthy and poor likewise fled to a more retired country life, to enjoy both seclusion and society, both the pleasures of country life and the advantages of an active city, where every luxury and necessity can be found at the door of every home.

Santa Ana has a fine, large, central business street, with new and costly brick blocks containing stores of every description. In this climate, however, we can see no necessity for ice, and the manufacturer and mixer of cool drinks can but find his business unprofitable. Up and down this street a line of cars runs all day long at fixed hours, connecting with other lines in Tustin and Orange. A trip or two on any of the lines is one of real pleasure.

Tustin is only two or three miles away, nearer the hills. The car, an open one with many seats, winds its way under shady lanes on either side, bordered by large and graceful pepper trees covered with spicy and fragrant blossoms. Here and there we see alongside the pavement an enormous sycamore tree, a monument of olden days and the native vegetation of the country. On both sides of the avenue are sidewalks of cement, and they who prefer walking can do so for miles under the shady trees without getting dusty or becoming heated by the sun. These sidewalks are marvels of beauty and comfort. On one side are old and graceful trees with drooping limbs, on the other are well-kept cypress hedges trimmed square and even, or long natural barriers of ever-blooming geraniums in numerous varieties, of every favorite shade of color from crimson to palest pink. Over the hedges we look into blue-grass lawns, green and well kept and exceedingly attractive. Suddenly we are in the middle of Tustin City. A beautiful, even magnificent bank building on one corner, a store on the opposite, two or three smaller shops and the inevitable splendid and elaborate hotel, and the town is fully described. Immediately adjoining are the beautiful and evergreen lawns and trees,--the city and country actually combined.

A trip to Orange reveals the very same features, only we pass through a more fertile country, with vineyards and orchards on every side, orange groves of various ages, walnut orchards, fields of tall corn, peanuts, beans and melons. Between all wind the shaded avenues with pepper and gum, cypress, pine or yellow flowering grevillea. The soil is everywhere of the richest kind, of a color between ashy green and chocolate. Nowhere have we seen such magnificent Indian corn,--whole fields where the stalks are from twelve to sixteen feet high. Orange is a more pretentious town than Tustin, but hardly any more beautiful, and far less secluded and quiet. There are two large and fine hotels, the one of brick being in town, while the other, the family hotel, lies in the suburbs in bowers of evergreen trees and gardens. In the middle of the town there is a plaza with a fountain and an exquisite little garden well planned and better kept. The lawns are like the softest velvet, and are bordered with blue and green flowers, with beds of sweetest mignonette, while bananas and palms spread their stately foliage in the center.

The climate of this part of Southern California is excellent. The thermometer stands at midday at eighty in the shade; in the evening there is always a breeze. Many of those I meet complain as usual, and greet me with the inevitable, “How warm it is to-day,” and our as inevitable answer is, that we cannot feel it, and that it just seems delightful to us. People here observe and feel the changes of temperature much more than we do farther north. With us they share the habit of complaining even if there is nothing to complain of.

The vineyards of Santa Ana have suffered much from a vine disease which may be compared with consumption or the Oriental plague in man. But every one thinks here that the pest will run its course and become harmless, and even now some of the vineyards are being replanted with fresh vines. The oranges do eminently well, but they must be sprayed and constant watch kept for the red scale imported here from Australia by an enterprising nurseryman. The plantations of walnuts are being rapidly extended, and nurseries of young walnut trees just appearing above the ground are seen in many places, the plants probably amounting to millions. The walnut generally planted is the seedling soft-shell and the common Santa Ana walnut, than which there is none choicer and more valued on the coast. Prunes are also a favorite crop, and pay well if not allowed to overbear, in which case the succeeding crop will be small. The same may be said of the apricot. These trees are here fine and healthy, and of a deeper and finer green than is seen almost anywhere else; but last year the trees bore too much, and this year the crop is by far not what it should be.

The resources of this country are such that the partial failure of a single crop will cause no serious injury. New resources are developed every day; there are few plants that do not thrive here. In the gardens as well as in the fields we see the tender semi-tropical plants, which cannot stand any frost, growing close to varieties from the North. Bananas, date palms, walnuts and oranges grow in the same field with peaches, apples and prunes. Pepper and camphor trees and the tender grevillea are on one side of the avenue, while on the other side we may find elm, eucalyptus or even the beautiful umbrella.

Irrigation is practiced on every farm. Fifteen thousand acres are covered by water stock, but not all irrigated yet. Just now the orange groves are irrigated, and I observe their methods. The land is always leveled before anything is planted, as there is too little water here to waste any on unlevel land. One way to irrigate an orchard is to plow furrows in between the rows of trees, and then let the water run in them. Another way is to check the whole orchard with small levees, inclosing thus a little square around every tree, and the square check of one tree meeting the same of the adjoining tree. This is actually flooding the land. Deciduous trees and vines grow without irrigation, but to get a good crop irrigation is necessary. The large, dry and rocky creek beds speak of the water that is wasted in winter time in flowing to the sea. Practically nothing of it is then saved. Irrigation districts under the Wright law are formed and forming, and everybody seems hopeful that in course of time there will be water enough to irrigate all the land that is good enough to be irrigated. Some of the finest ranches in the State lie right at the feet of Santa Ana. The San Joaquin ranch contains one hundred thousand acres, I am told, and it is not yet cut up, and thus some of the best land around Santa Ana is yet only used as pasture. The owners failed to sell in the time of the boom and must now wait until the land that is already covered with ditches will be fully settled before they can sell, but the time, we predict, is not very far off.

SANTA ANA TO SAN DIEGO.

A railroad trip from Santa Ana to San Diego offers many points of interest. It carries us through both the most highly cultivated and through the absolutely vacant, not to say barren, lands. We leave the orange grove and walnut plantations of Santa Ana, and are carried almost immediately past the lovely and shaded Tustin, where pepper groves and lime hedges, gardens and splendid villas, combine nature with art, taste and enterprise to create a veritable oasis for those favored ones who can remain there. We rush for a few minutes through these highly cultivated lands, and suddenly find ourselves out on a wide, open plain, comprising about eighty thousand acres, without a house to be seen anywhere, with no orchards, no vineyards, no signs of civilized life. And still the soil is the richest, the native vegetation of grasses the most luxuriant. The soil is apparently subirrigated, and could grow almost anything the farmer might plant there. Along the horizon, stretching from the mountains way down on the plains like an immense plumed serpent in its wavy and coiling track, is seen a continuous band of sycamore trees, outlining the bed of a stream. It is like stepping out of one room into another. What can be the reason of the sudden change? This vast body of land, containing over 126,000 acres, is an old Mexican grant, the remnant of one of those Mexican cancers, which to such an extent has retarded the development of California. Sure enough, we see wire fences everywhere, and cattle with spreading horns and sheep without number. But we see no sign of the cultivator, no horses, no signs of progress. The owner held onto the land, probably expecting it to bring a price many times the sum it was worth. He died, and so died the boom, and now the land is under administration. When the time comes that this large San Joaquin grant can be sold to farmers in small tracts, it will very greatly increase the cultivable area of Orange county.

But we pass on, leaving the open country; we are soon in among the rolling lands, among foothills not unlike those of the Sierra Nevada in the San Joaquin valley. To the left are the San Bernardino Mountains, here and there a peak of boldest outline, and streams and cañons winding their way to the sea. At El Toro a number of passengers got off to take the stage to Laguna, a seaside hotel, where the farmers and business men of every color, from the heated interior valleys, delight to spend a day in fishing, hunting for abalones, or in watching the breakers roll against the sandy beach. A little farther on we stop at El Capistrano, or rather at San Juan Capistrano, the old ruined mission, situated in the most beautiful little valley, with its winding and sycamore shaded creek. The mission must have been one of the very largest in the State. The ruins are yet very extensive, consisting of long and regular adobe walls, and one-half of a yet magnificent looking church, in the regular Spanish style of architecture. A rather large size town of Mexican houses, with a Mexican population, and venerable fig trees, tall and wavy palm trees, and large but unkempt gardens, give the place a rather more important look than it perhaps deserves. There is but little sign that the boom was ever here. Still the valley is so beautiful and evidently so fertile, that it needs only work and taste to make it equal to the very best. We see yet the old mission pear trees, large and untrimmed, not unlike our drooping oaks, loaded with pears to such an extent that there appears hardly room for a blackbird to get through. The mission grapevines are all dead. Gigantic vines, which covered trellises and arbors, and which perhaps bore tons of grapes, with trunks as heavy as the body of a boy, are there yet, but without leaves and young shoots; they are dead, having surrendered to the vine pest of the country.

After leaving Capistrano we follow the little creek to the sea. The valley is from one-half to one mile wide. Here and there are flourishing little vineyards, but mostly pastures and cornfields or patches of beans. At last we reach the sea, the Pacific, calm and blue, with breakers lashing the shore. To the right we leave the rocky promontory of the Capistrano Mountains, and for an hour or more run on the very beach. In stormy weather the spray of the breakers must wet the cars, which run only a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. This part of the route is the most interesting and the most refreshing to one coming from the interior plains. We are now in San Diego county. The shore is abrupt and bluffy, the hills bordering on the sea.

At Oceanside we meet the first of the boom towns, one of those that sprang up for pleasure and profit, towns of magnificent villas, broad streets and avenues, lined with infant blue gums, with rows and hedges of the ever-bright geraniums, and with large and splendid-looking hotels, with airy balconies, verandas and lookout towers, swept by the fresh breezes of the sea. The vicinity of every such station is heralded by the characteristic white stakes that mark the town lots, and by rows of small, intensely blue, gums; by a sprinkling of cottages, small and large, perhaps a mile or two before the whistle of the steam-engine brings us to a standstill. The first things that meet our eye at every station are large and splendid lawns, young plantations of palm trees and other plants characteristic of the Southern coast climate, flowers of brightest hue, all started by the enterprising immigrants who came here to buy climate, sun and air, and to enjoy the breakers and the ocean every day in the year. After Oceanside, we touch at Carlsbad and Del Mar, both seaside resorts with magnificent villas costing from twenty to forty thousand dollars each, and with fine but young plantations and gardens. I was especially charmed with Del Mar, with its large, tasteful hotel on the bluff, and quite a large colony of villas and mansions in various sizes and styles close around,--a bright and charming picture, a place where a traveler feels at home at once, where he would like to pass the balance of all the days he can spare from business and toil.

The scene changes again as the cars carry us through the foothills, along the bed of creeks, or across lagoons connected with the sea, or over gaping chasms. We look down deep into the valleys below, where shady sycamores and white cottages mark the farmers’ homes, and where vine-clad hills offset the native brown of the country. I am surprised to see how the grapevines thrive so luxuriantly so very close to the shore. In some places there are fine and thrifty vines within a stone’s throw of the breakers, only protected by a slight undulation in the ground from the most direct wind. Of course, grapes on those vines cannot be expected to be very sweet; it is wonderful enough that they are there at all.

The water supply of this part of San Diego county has been very much underrated. The railroad crosses perhaps a dozen different creeks, all showing living water, and which are far from being entirely dried up. With a Supreme Court more enlightened, and with proper legislation as to the needs of the country, San Diego county may yet be able to store water enough to irrigate very large areas of land, where colonies of thrifty farmers may create and maintain prosperous orchards and vineyards as a support and backbone to the many pleasure resorts.

But we are out of the hills. Smiling and glistening in the evening sun lies San Diego Bay, with the elevated Point Loma, the ever-present breakers on the bar, and away out on the low peninsula the gigantic and turreted pile of the Hotel del Coronado, to say nothing of San Diego itself, with its miles of marked town lots and villas. But I shall not endeavor to describe this town and its bay and climate. The latter may possibly not be excelled anywhere; the former lacks a most essential thing,--an abundance of trees and vegetation. Still, with the water that has lately been brought here the trees and flowers will come soon enough we hope, when green lawns, bananas and palms will be ready to tell the tale, and young plantations will be seen on the hills and around roadway homes. But I forget I am bound for El Cajon and its raisin vineyards, and must catch the train.

EL CAJON.

The country lying between San Diego and El Cajon does not at this time of the year present many attractive features. The little train, consisting of a locomotive, tender and a passenger car, wriggles itself between brown, rolling hills, over small cañons, dry and sandy, without any other vegetation than grass, and here and there a few evergreen shrubs. Close to San Diego we pass along the Chollas valley and creek, where an attempt has been made at colonization, as we understand it in the San Joaquin valley. The land is divided up in ten and twenty-acre tracts and dotted over with small and unpretentious cottages, as well as with fine and expensive mansions. Young orchards of pears, olives, prunes, oranges and figs are seen wedged in between vacant and unbroken land. In the river bottom are Chinese gardens, with windmills, and patches of cabbage, corn and small truck. Much of this land is irrigated with water from the Sweetwater dam, some twelve miles away on the Sweetwater river. On the bottom land there are a few Muscat vineyards, for the supply of the San Diego market. I noticed the grapes there. They were of the Muscat of Alexandria variety, very large and fine both as to bunch and berry, and very sweet. I have seen no finer Alexandrias anywhere.

But we have hardly time to observe this cultivated spot before we are out again among the rolling hills. The engine pants heavily, and we are constantly ascending. The same low hills everywhere,--no settlers, no gardens, no plantations of any kind. The soil is brown adobe mixed with gravel and small boulders; in fact there is nothing to see and admire. For twenty miles there are two or three small stations, but there were no station houses to be seen nor any settlements around. The railroad is apparently made to tap a better country in the interior. But even in this uninhabited country the boom started to penetrate in earnest. Large signs announcing the sale of town lots, wide streets once plowed up across each other at right angles, square blocks which are plowed around or otherwise mapped out, here and there a white post with a number and a name, and we have a good idea of a town where the lots sold for $250 apiece or more.

All at once the engine whistles, the area widens and we see in front of us a large, flat valley, apparently almost circular, from four to five miles across, bounded by lower and higher hills, behind which a few higher peaks look down gray and solemn. This is El Cajon. We step out on the platform of the station, and the view is fine. The valley lies below us, the bottom is apparently flat, but in reality slightly undulating and somewhat sloping towards the center. Rows of vines begin at the station, and from here vineyards stretch in all directions for miles and miles, sometimes in large blocks of regular shape, then again in irregular patches among otherwise cultivated lands half way up on the lower hills. Dotted all over the valley are farmhouses in all styles, elegant and tasty or plain and simple, enough only to keep out the rain and the sun. Around every such cluster of buildings there is a little plantation of eucalyptus and cypress, and a few ornamental plants. Here and there at long intervals is seen a row of gums, black and somber, as if they were on duty as shields from wind and fog. We are soon in the bus on the way to town. The roads are straight and well kept, bordered with young eucalyptus and cypress, and with vineyards on both sides with the rows of vines remarkably distinct; we can follow each one of them distinctly for several miles over the undulating ground until they end on the steeper slopes of the hills, or run into the little cañons bordering the valley. El Cajon has no pretentions to being a town; it is an unassuming and quiet little village, whose inhabitants, when they speak of “town,” always mean San Diego, twenty miles away. El Cajon has a dozen houses, all told, one of each kind of the most necessary stores and shops, but Wells, Fargo & Co. have not yet discovered this quiet place. Nevertheless, it has two hotels, one small and unassuming, which runs a bus to the station, and where everybody seems to meet; the other, large and pretentious, both as to bay-windows and name,--Corona del Cajon, but apparently void of much internal life. The railroad to El Cajon was finished only some eight months ago. If it had been running three years ago during the Southern boom, the valley would perhaps to-day be rivaling Pasadena and Riverside in thrifty farms and residences.

El Cajon is the most important raisin-producing district in San Diego county, and so exclusively and to such an extent have the raisin grapes been planted here that we hardly see anything else. Vineyards as far as we can see in all directions; vineyards in the rolling bottom of the valley; vineyards also on the steeper slopes of the hills; nothing else than Muscats of Alexandria for business, and only a few other vines around the cottages for home use. A drive through the valley brings us in close contact with what we saw from the more elevated station. One vineyard joins the other, with only a road between, and there are no rows of poplars and only very rarely a row of eucalyptus or cypress. The view is open on every side, and from every point we can see over the valley and the low hills surrounding it. The vines have at this time of the year left off growing and have assumed a dark green color, not relieved by any young and more vividly colored shoots. The grapes hang ripe under the branches, and the trays are in many places distributed in piles over the field. There are two packing-houses in the valley; the one now under way is 40 by 130 feet, being built of redwood, and apparently most carefully put up. I see no sign of irrigation anywhere, and every one tells me that it is not required. But I cannot help thinking that a little water judiciously used would have kept the vines growing much longer, and would have naturally increased the crop, which now only averages two and one-half tons of green grapes per acre. There are many very beautiful mansions in the valley, surrounded by very praiseworthy attempts at landscape gardening, but the absence of water for irrigation makes itself felt everywhere, both in regard to the size of the plants and their color. Water can be had in abundance at a depth of from only twelve to eighteen feet, and windmills and reservoirs would do much towards a substitute for ditches. As we drive through the valley and up the divide between El Cajon and the Sweetwater valley, the view is very attractive indeed,--on one side the many well-kept vineyards of El Cajon, on the other, way below us, the narrow and winding valley of the Sweetwater.

The Sweetwater valley, or rather continuation of valleys, is much smaller than El Cajon, perhaps only a quarter or half mile wide, but it is more favorable to raisins, grapes or vegetation of any kind. Olive orchards of good size trees, vineyards with large and yet growing vines, cornfields and pastures, and the winding and shaded little creek in the center of the valley, give the latter a freshness and beauty not surpassed anywhere.

On our way on the railroad as well as through El Cajon valley, we have frequently passed alongside of or under the now famous Cuyamaca flume, carrying water to San Diego and Coronado. This flume is a fine structure, running sometimes in the ground, sometimes again on elevated trestle-work over the ravines, or spanning the gaps between lofty hills. The whole length of the flume is thirty-six miles, and the cost of construction was $112,000. Its size is five feet, ten inches wide, and sixteen inches deep, but by an addition of two more boards the depth of the water can be increased to three feet, ten inches,--a large body of water for this country, where water is comparatively scarce. The flume heads in a magnificent dam at the head of San Diego river, and it would suffice to irrigate quite a large stretch of country if the people were only willing to use the water. But the farmers here have been so repeatedly told that the land absolutely needs no irrigation, and indeed would be ruined by the same, that the most of them now fully believe this to be the case. The water is therefore not diverted anywhere along the route of the flume, and even in El Cajon and other places, where the crop of almost every kind of fruit would be doubled by judicious irrigation, no effort to use the same is made. I could find no one who irrigated, and as a consequence the company that owns the flume have not yet put in the extra boards that would more than double the carrying capacity of the flume.

One of the most interesting places in San Diego county is the famous Sweetwater dam. It takes only two and one-half hours to visit it and return, and a trip to it will repay the trouble. We start out southeast and cross to National City, only a few miles from San Diego, and really a suburb of that town. National City is decidedly new, an attempt at something grand, which it will take sometime to finish. The most interesting thing there, in a horticultural sense, is the olive orchards of Kimball Brothers. They are scattered in two or three places, and comprise about fifty acres altogether. The trees are as large as good size apple trees, bushy and silvery, and are heavily laden with fruit. The land around each tree was checked up, each tree having a little square for itself, and a Chinaman with a hoe was busy irrigating. In one corner of the orchard was a large circular reservoir five or six feet high, and perhaps twenty feet across, to facilitate the irrigation. The train starts from here directly in among the hills, following the bed of the Sweetwater river. The bottom land is now being settled up by farmers and gardeners, who were busy taking their first lessons in irrigation. The plantations of course are very young, the irrigation works having been finished quite recently. At Sunnyside there are a few older orchards of oranges and olives, but, as a whole, the country is uncultivated.

Five minutes more and we are at the dam. There is no station, except a little wooden platform, and we had to scramble over a rough hill to get down to the dam. The gorge there is probably one hundred feet wide and several hundred feet deep, with almost perpendicular sides. There is no other vegetation visible than grass and a few low shrubs scattered around. It is a most excellent place for a dam. The Sweetwater dam is built almost entirely of masonry and cement, and, both as regards construction and size, is one of the very best in the world. It is built in the shape of an arch, with the convex part up stream, and gives an impression of solidity and safety not always found in structures of this kind. The masonry dam is forty-six feet wide at the bottom, at the top twelve feet. The length of the top is 340 feet, and at the bottom of the cañon the base of the dam is about one hundred feet, while the height is about ninety feet in the center. At one end of the dam is a wasteway and gates for letting the water out in case of a flood. The gates slide on an inclined plane, and consist simply of three-inch boards with pegs in each end, which are caught by a hook when they are to be raised. The capacity of the wasteway is said to be fifteen hundred cubic feet per second, or as much as the Sweetwater river is ever likely to carry, even during flood time. For one who is accustomed to headgates and waterways in the Fresno canals, this waterway looks very small indeed. But the engineers say it is large enough, and we suppose they must be right. The water is delivered through a large iron pipe thirty-six inches in diameter, covered for some distance down the cañon with masonry. For 29,807 feet, this pipe line runs down the valley or on the mesa lands adjoining it. It will deliver fifty million gallons of water per day, and can now irrigate ten thousand acres of land. The whole cost of construction was $502,000, and the time consumed in building was two years.

The reservoir, as it now stands, is a magnificent sheet of water with tributary watersheds of 186 square miles, and a water surface of about three and one-half square miles. It is a grand illustration of the enterprise of the San Diego capitalists, of the skill and success of the California engineers, and of what may possibly be accomplished on nearly every stream in San Diego county. It is a structure of which any country might be proud, and which has few equals and no superiors anywhere in the world.

On our way back we meet a picnic party of schoolgirls, who with their teachers have spent the day in the country. They fill the cars with smiles and chat, with flowers in bouquets and garlands, in baskets and by the armful. We are treated to flowers and to beautiful Muscat grapes culled from the vineyards,--enormous bunches and berries almost as large as plums. These grapes are a revelation to me, grown here within the reach of the fogs of the ocean, and irrigated with water from the dam or flume. Verily, I have never seen choicer grapes anywhere, and I am satisfied that they could not be surpassed by any for raisins. What a fertile country this will be when irrigation is better understood and more practiced. Could we but see it when that time comes.

RIVERSIDE.

There is no place in Southern California where the effects of a close and intelligent study of horticultural matters are so visible as in Riverside. Money alone may build villas and mansions; but the intelligent and ever watchful horticulturist alone can, out of climate, soil, water and capital, produce a Riverside. It is charming beyond description; it must be seen to be realized. The best time to get a full and good view of Riverside is early in the morning, just at sunrise, and there is no better place to view it from than the hill on which the Hotel Rubidoux was to have been built. I arose before sunrise, and struggled up the steep hillside. It well repaid me for the trouble, as few more beautiful views can be had. The whole settlement can be taken in at a glance,--the town close by imbedded in orange groves and vineyards, and the dense verdure of the country stretching for ten miles down the valley, and almost connecting with the yet farther off South Riverside. On the eastern side we see the San Bernardino Mountains, with the “Old Greyback,” and between the mountains and the settlements a lower range of steep hills appear, which in a continuous range either bar the way or like isolated islands shoot boldly up from the mesa land.

The Riverside colony forms a continuous settlement along the mesa, skirting the river, the deep green of the orange orchards harmonizing splendidly with the lighter green of the vineyards. At close intervals there are houses in every direction, with the bluest smoke rising straight up from their chimneys, and thence carried in long, tiny bands and columns down the valley just level with the tree tops. It is a pity the hotel on this hill was never finished--a great many more would then have enjoyed the almost unequaled view. An extension of the main business street in town leads up to this hill. On both sides of the street there are fine orange orchards and neat houses,--real country homes, sidewalks of cement where rows of fan-palms take the place of regular shade trees along their sides. The business portion of Riverside is confined to two streets crossing each other at right angles. If we stand in the center of this crossing we take it all in, the houses extending a block and a half in the four different directions. Some of the houses and brick blocks are very large and expensive, while many again are smaller, but all are costly and elegant, with new and perhaps startling ornamental designs. Whatever Southern California does, it does well, and even the cheapest structures have an air of character and taste which can hardly be too much admired.