SCARLET PASSION-VINE.SCARLET PASSION-VINE.
There is little left of the old Spanish occupation, but the remains of it make the romance of the country, and appeal to our sense of fitness and beauty. It is to be hoped that all such historical associations will be preserved, for they give to the traveller that which our country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettinessof our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, orpatio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. But why should the tourist find fault with this? The American likes it, and he would not like the picturesqueness of the Spanish or the Latin races.
So far as climate and natural beauty go to make one contented in a winter resort, Southern California has unsurpassed attractions, and both seem to me to fit very well the American temperament; but the associations of art and history are wanting, and the tourist knows how largely his enjoyment of a vacation in Southern Italy or Sicily or Northern Africa depends upon these—upon these and upon the aspects of human nature foreign to his experience.
It goes without saying that this is not Europe, either in its human interest or in a certain refinement of landscape that comes only by long cultivation and the occupancy of ages. One advantage of foreign travel to the restless American is that he carries with him no responsibility for the government or the progress of the country he is in, and that he leaves business behind him; whereas in this new country, which is his own, the development of which is so interesting,and in which the opportunities of fortune seem so inviting, he is constantly tempted "to take a hand in." If, however, he is superior to this fever, and is willing simply to rest, to drift along with the equable days, I know of no other place where he can be more truly contented. Year by year the country becomes more agreeable for the traveller, in the first place, through the improvement in the hotels, and in the second, by better roads. In the large villages and cities there are miles of excellent drives, well sprinkled, through delightful avenues, in a park-like country, where the eye is enchanted with color and luxurious vegetation, and captivated by the remarkable beauty of the hills, the wildness and picturesqueness of which enhance the charming cultivation of the orchards and gardens. And no country is more agreeable for riding and driving, for even at mid-day, in the direct sun rays, there is almost everywhere a refreshing breeze, and one rides or drives or walks with little sense of fatigue. The horses are uniformly excellent, either in the carriage or under the saddle. I am sure they are remarkable in speed, endurance, and ease of motion. If the visiting season had no other attraction, the horses would make it distinguished.
A great many people like to spend months in a comfortable hotel, lounging on the piazzas, playing lawn-tennis, taking a morning ride or afternoon drive, making an occasional picnic excursion up some mountain cañon, getting up charades, playing at private theatricals, dancing, flirting, floating along with more or less sentiment and only the weariness that comes when there are no duties. There are plenty of places where all these things can be done, and with no sortof anxiety about the weather from week to week, and with the added advantage that the women and children can take care of themselves. But for those who find such a life monotonous there are other resources. There is very good fishing in the clear streams in the foot-hills, hunting in the mountains for large game still worthy of the steadiest nerves, and good bird-shooting everywhere. There are mountains to climb, cañons to explore, lovely valleys in the recesses of the hills to be discovered—in short, one disposed to activity and not afraid of roughing it could occupy himself most agreeably and healthfully in the wild parts of San Bernardino and San Diego counties; he may even still start a grizzly in the Sierra Madre range in Los Angeles County. Hunting and exploring in the mountains, riding over the mesas, which are green from the winter rains and gay with a thousand delicate grasses and flowering plants, is manly occupation to suit the most robust and adventurous. Those who saunter in the trim gardens, or fly from one hotel parlor to the other, do not see the best of Southern California in the winter.
But the distinction of this coast, and that which will forever make it attractive at the season when the North Atlantic is forbidding, is that the ocean-side is as equable, as delightful, in winter as in summer. Its sea-side places are truly all-the-year-round resorts. In subsequent chapters I shall speak in detail of different places as to climate and development and peculiarities of production. I will now only give a general idea of Southern California as a wintering place. Even as far north as Monterey, in the central part of the State, the famous Hotel del Monte, with its magnificent park of pines and live-oaks, and exquisite flower-gardens underneath the trees, is remarkable for its steadiness of temperature. I could see little difference between the temperature of June and of February. The difference is of course greatest at night. The maximum the year through ranges from about 65° to about 80°, and the minimum from about 35° to about 58°, though there are days when the thermometer goes above 90°, and nights when it falls below 30°.
ROSE-BUSH, SANTA BARBARA.ROSE-BUSH, SANTA BARBARA.
To those who prefer the immediate ocean air to that air as modified by such valleys as the San Gabriel and the Santa Ana, the coast offers a variety of choice in different combinations of sea and mountain climate all along the southern sunny exposure from Santa Barbara to San Diego. In Santa Barbara County the Santa Inez range of mountains runs westward to meet the Pacific at Point Conception. South of this noble range are a number of little valleys opening to the sea, and in one of these, with a harbor and sloping upland and cañon of its own, lies Santa Barbara, looking southward towards the sunny islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz. Above it is the Mission Cañon, at the entrance of which is the best-preserved of the old Franciscan missions. There is a superb drive eastward along the long and curving sea-beach of four miles to the cañon of Monticito, which is rather a series of nooks and terraces, of lovely places and gardens, of plantations of oranges and figs, rising up to the base of the gray mountains. The long line of the Santa Inez suggests the promontory of Sorrento, and a view from the opposite rocky point, which encloses the harbor on the west, by the help of cypresses which look like stone-pines, recalls many an Italian coast scene, and in situation the Bay of Naples. The whole aspect is foreign, enchanting, and the semi-tropical fruits and vines and flowers, with a golden atmosphere poured over all, irresistibly take the mind to scenes of Italian romance. There is still a little Spanish flavor left in the town, in a few old houses, in names and families historic, and in the life without hurry or apprehension. There is a delightful commingling here of sea and mountain air, and in a hundred fertile nooks in the hills one in the most delicate health may be sheltered from every harsh wind. I think no one ever leaves Santa Barbara without a desire to return to it.
Farther down the coast, only eighteen miles from Los Angeles, and a sort of Coney Island resort of that thriving city, is Santa Monica. Its hotel stands on a high bluff in a lovely bend of the coast. It is popular in summer as well as winter, as the number of cottages attest, and it was chosen by the directors of the National Soldiers' Home as the site of the Home on the Pacific coast. There the veterans, in a commodious building, dream away their lives most contentedly, and can fancy that they hear the distant thunder of guns in the pounding of the surf.
At about the same distance from Los Angeles, southward, above Point Vincent, is Redondo Beach, a new resort, which, from its natural beauty and extensive improvements, promises to be a delightful place of sojourn at any time of the year. The mountainous, embracing arms of the bay are exquisite in contour and color, and the beach is very fine. The hotel is perfectly comfortable—indeed, uncommonly attractive—and the extensive planting of trees, palms, and shrubs, and the cultivation of flowers, will change the place in a year or two into a scene of green and floral loveliness; in this region two years, such is the rapid growth, suffices to transform a desert into a park or garden. On the hills, at a little distance from the beach and pier, are the buildings of the Chautauqua, which holds a local summer session here. The Chautauqua people, the country over, seem to have, in selecting sightly and agreeable sites for their temples of education and amusement, as good judgment as the old monks had in planting their monasteries and missions.
AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.
If one desires a thoroughly insular climate, he may cross to the picturesque island of Santa Catalina. All along the coast flowers bloom in the winter months, and the ornamental semi-tropical plants thrive; and there are many striking headlands and pretty bays and gentle seaward slopes which are already occupied by villages, and attract visitors who would practise economy. The hills frequently come close to the shore, forming those valleys in which the Californians of the pastoral period placed their ranch houses. At San Juan Capristrano the fathers had one of their most flourishing missions, the ruins of which are the most picturesque the traveller will find. It is altogether a genial, attractive coast, and if the tourist does not prefer an inland situation, like the Hotel Raymond (which scarcely has a rival anywhere in its lovely surroundings), he will keep on down the coast to San Diego.
The transition from the well-planted counties of Los Angeles and Orange is not altogether agreeable to the eye. One misses the trees. The general aspect of the coast about San Diego is bare in comparison. This simply means that the southern county is behind the others in development. Nestled among the hills there are live-oaks and sycamores; and of course at National City and below, in El Cajon and the valley of the Sweetwater, there are extensive plantations of oranges, lemons, olives, and vines, but the San Diego region generally lies in the sun shadeless. I have a personal theory that much vegetation is inconsistent with the best atmosphere for the human being. The air is nowhere else so agreeable to me as it is in a barren New Mexican or Arizona desert at the proper elevation. I do not know whether the San Diego climatewould be injured if the hills were covered with forest and the valleys were all in the highest and most luxuriant vegetation. The theory is that the interaction of the desert and ocean winds will always keep it as it is, whatever man may do. I can only say that, as it is, I doubt if it has its equal the year round for agreeableness and healthfulness in our Union; and it is the testimony of those whose experience of the best Mediterranean climate is more extended and much longer continued than mine, that it is superior to any on that enclosed sea. About this great harbor, whose outer beach has an extent of twenty-five miles, whose inland circuit of mountains must be over fifty miles, there are great varieties of temperature, of shelter and exposure, minute subdivisions of climate, whose personal fitness can only be attested by experience. There is a great difference, for instance, between the quality of the climate at the elevation of the Florence Hotel, San Diego, and the University Heights on the mesa above the town, and that on the long Coronado Beach which protects the inner harbor from the ocean surf. The latter, practically surrounded by water, has a true marine climate, but a peculiar and dry marine climate, as tonic in its effect as that of Capri, and, I believe, with fewer harsh days in the winter season. I wish to speak with entire frankness about this situation, for I am sure that what so much pleases me will suit a great number of people, who will thank me for not being reserved. Doubtless it will not suit hundreds of people as well as some other localities in Southern California, but I found no other place where I had the feeling of absolute content and willingness to stay on indefinitely.There is a geniality about it for which the thermometer does not account, a charm which it is difficult to explain. Much of the agreeability is due to artificial conditions, but the climate man has not made nor marred.
The Coronado Beach is about twelve miles long. A narrow sand promontory, running northward from the main-land, rises to the Heights, then broadens into a table-land, which seems to be an island, and measures about a mile and a half each way; this is called South Beach, and is connected by another spit of sand with a like area called North Beach, which forms, with Point Loma, the entrance to the harbor. The North Beach, covered partly with chaparral and broad fields of barley, is alive with quail, and is a favorite coursing-ground for rabbits. The soil, which appears uninviting, is with water uncommonly fertile, being a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and flowering shrubs of all countries.
The development is on the South Beach, which was in January, 1887, nothing but a waste of sand and chaparral. I doubt if the world can show a like transformation in so short a time. I saw it in February of that year, when all the beauty, except that of ocean, sky, and atmosphere, was still to be imagined. It is now as if the wand of the magician had touched it. In the first place, abundance of water was brought over by a submarine conduit, and later from the extraordinary Coronado Springs (excellent soft water for drinking and bathing, and with a recognized medicinal value), and with these streams the beach began to bloom like a tropical garden. Tens of thousands of treeshave attained a remarkable growth in three years. The nursery is one of the most interesting botanical and flower gardens in the country; palms and hedges of Monterey cypress and marguerites line the avenues. There are parks and gardens of rarest flowers and shrubs, whose brilliant color produces the same excitement in the mind as strains of martial music. A railway traverses the beach for a mile from the ferry to the hotel. There are hundreds of cottages with their gardens scattered over the surface; there is a race-track, a museum, an ostrich farm, a labyrinth, good roads for driving, and a dozen other attractions for the idle or the inquisitive.
HOTEL DEL CORONADO.HOTEL DEL CORONADO.
The hotel stands upon the south front of the beach and near the sea, above which it is sufficiently elevated to give a fine prospect. The sound of the beating surf is perpetual there. At low tide there is a splendid driving beach miles in extent, and though the slope is abrupt, the opportunity for bathing is good, with a little care in regard to the undertow. But there is a safe natatorium on the harbor side close to the hotel. The stranger, when he first comes upon this novel hotel and this marvellous scene of natural and created beauty, is apt to exhaust his superlatives. I hesitate to attempt to describe this hotel—this airy and picturesque and half-bizarre wooden creation of the architect. Taking it and its situation together, I know nothing else in the world with which to compare it, and I have never seen any other which so surprised at first, that so improved on a two weeks' acquaintance, and that has left in the mind an impression so entirely agreeable. It covers about four and a half acres of ground, including an inner court of about an acre, the rich made soil of which is raised to the level of the main floor. The house surrounds this, in the Spanish mode of building, with a series of galleries, so that most of the suites of rooms have a double outlook—one upon this lovely garden, the other upon the ocean or the harbor. The effect of this interior court orpatiois to give gayety and an air of friendliness to the place, brilliant as it is with flowers and climbing vines; and when the royal and date palms that are vigorously thriving in it attain their growth it will be magnificent. Big hotels and caravansaries are usually tiresome, unfriendly places; and if I should lay too much stress upon the vast dining-room (which has a floor area of ten thousand feet without post or pillar), or the beautiful breakfast-room, or the circular ballroom (which has an area of eleven thousand feet, with its timber roof open to the lofty observatory), or the music-room, billiard-rooms for ladies, the reading-rooms and parlors, the pretty gallery overlooking the spacious office rotunda, and then say that the whole is illuminated with electric lights, and capable of being heated to any temperature desired—I might convey a false impression as to the actual comfort and home-likeness of this charming place. On the sea side the broad galleries of each story are shut in by glass, which can be opened to admit or shut to exclude the fresh ocean breeze. Whatever the temperature outside, those great galleries are always agreeable for lounging or promenading. For me, I never tire of the sea and its changing color and movement. If this great house were filled with guests, so spacious are its lounging places I should think it would never appear to be crowded; and if it were nearly empty, so admirablyare the rooms contrived for family life it will not seem lonesome. I shall add that the management is of the sort that makes the guest feel at home and at ease. Flowers, brought in from the gardens and nurseries, are every where in profusion—on the dining-tables, in the rooms, all about the house. So abundantly are they produced that no amount of culling seems to make an impression upon their mass.
OSTRICH YARD, CORONADO BEACH.OSTRICH YARD, CORONADO BEACH.
But any description would fail to give the secret of the charm of existence here. Restlessness disappears, for one thing, but there is no languor or depression. I cannot tell why, when the thermometer is at 60° or 63°, the air seems genial and has no sense of chilliness,or why it is not oppressive at 80° or 85°. I am sure the place will not suit those whose highest idea of winter enjoyment is tobogganing and an ice palace, nor those who revel in the steam and languor of a tropical island; but for a person whose desires are moderate, whose tastes are temperate, who is willing for once to be good-humored and content in equable conditions, I should commend Coronado Beach and the Hotel del Coronado, if I had not long ago learned that it is unsafe to commend to any human being a climate or a doctor.
But you can take your choice. It lies there, our Mediterranean region, on a blue ocean, protected by barriers of granite from the Northern influences, an infinite variety of plain, cañon, hills, valleys, sea-coast; our New Italy without malaria, and with every sort of fruit which we desire (except the tropical), which will be grown in perfection when our knowledge equals our ambition; and if you cannot find a winter home there or pass some contented weeks in the months of Northern inclemency, you are weighing social advantages against those of the least objectionable climate within the Union. It is not yet proved that this equability and the daily out-door life possible there will change character, but they are likely to improve the disposition and soften the asperities of common life. At any rate, there is a land where from November to April one has not to make a continual fight with the elements to keep alive.
It has been said that this land of the sun and of the equable climate will have the effect that other lands of a southern aspect have upon temperament and habits. It is feared that Northern-bred people,who are guided by the necessity of making hay while the sun shines, will not make hay at all in a land where the sun always shines. It is thought that unless people are spurred on incessantly by the exigencies of the changing seasons they will lose energy, and fall into an idle floating along with gracious nature. Will not one sink into a comfortable and easy procrastination if he has a whole year in which to perform the labor of three months? Will Southern California be an exception to those lands of equable climate and extraordinary fertility where every effort is postponed till "to-morrow?"
I wish there might be something solid in this expectation; that this may be a region where the restless American will lose something of his hurry and petty, feverish ambition. Partially it may be so. He will take, he is already taking, something of the tone of the climate and of the old Spanish occupation. But the race instinct of thrift and of "getting on" will not wear out in many generations. Besides, the condition of living at all in Southern California in comfort, and with the social life indispensable to our people, demands labor, not exhausting and killing, but still incessant—demands industry. A land that will not yield satisfactorily without irrigation, and whose best paying produce requires intelligent as well as careful husbandry, will never be an idle land. Egypt, with all itsdolce far niente, was never an idle land for the laborer.
It may be expected, however, that no more energy will be developed or encouraged than is needed for the daily tasks, and these tasks being lighter than elsewhere, and capable of being postponed, that there willbe less stress and strain in the daily life. Although the climate of Southern California is not enervating, in fact is stimulating to the new-comer, it is doubtless true that the monotony of good weather, of the sight of perpetual bloom and color in orchards and gardens, will take away nervousness and produce a certain placidity, which might be taken for laziness by a Northern observer. It may be that engagements will not be kept with desired punctuality, under the impression that the enjoyment of life does not depend upon exact response to the second-hand of a watch; and it is not unpleasant to think that there is a corner of the Union where there will be a little more leisure, a little more of serene waiting on Providence, an abatement of the restless rush and haste of our usual life. The waves of population have been rolling westward for a long time, and now, breaking over the mountains, they flow over Pacific slopes and along the warm and inviting seas. Is it altogether an unpleasing thought that the conditions of life will be somewhat easier there, that there will be some physical repose, the race having reached the sunset of the continent, comparable to the desirable placidity of life called the sunset of old age? This may be altogether fanciful, but I have sometimes felt, in the sunny moderation of nature there, that this land might offer for thousands at least a winter of content.
From the northern limit of California to the southern is about the same distance as from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Charleston, South Carolina. Of these two coast lines, covering nearly ten degrees of latitude, or over seven hundred miles, the Atlantic has greater extremes of climate and greater monthly variations, and the Pacific greater variety of productions. The State of California is, however, so mountainous, cut by longitudinal and transverse ranges, that any reasonable person can find in it a temperature to suit him the year through. But it does not need to be explained that it would be difficult to hit upon any general characteristic that would apply to the stretch of the Atlantic coast named, as a guide to a settler looking for a home; the description of Massachusetts would be wholly misleading for South Carolina. It is almost as difficult to make any comprehensive statement about the long line of the California coast.
It is possible, however, limiting the inquiry to the southern third of the State—an area of about fifty-eight thousand square miles, as large as Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—to answer fairly some of the questions oftenest asked about it. These relate to the price of land, its productiveness, the kind of products most profitable,the sort of labor required, and its desirability as a place of residence for the laborer, for the farmer or horticulturist of small means, and for the man with considerable capital. Questions on these subjects cannot be answered categorically, but I hope to be able, by setting down my own observations and using trustworthy reports, to give others the material on which to exercise their judgment. In the first place, I think it demonstrable that a person would profitably exchange 160 acres of farming land east of the one hundredth parallel for ten acres, with a water right, in Southern California.
YUCCA-PALM.YUCCA-PALM.
In making this estimate I do not consider the question of health or merely the agreeability of the climate, but the conditions of labor, the ease with which one could support a family, and the profits over and above a fair living. It has been customary in reckoning the value of land there to look merely to the profit of it beyond its support of a family, forgetting that agriculture and horticulture the world over, like almost all other kinds of business, usually do little more than procure a good comfortable living, with incidental education, to those who engage in them. That the majority of the inhabitants of Southern California will become rich by the culture of the orange and the vine is an illusion; but it is not an illusion that twenty times its present population can live there in comfort, in what might be called luxury elsewhere, by the cultivation of the soil, all far removed from poverty and much above the condition of the majority of the inhabitants of the foreign wine and fruit-producing countries. This result is assured by the extraordinary productiveness of the land, uninterrupted the year through, and by the amazing extension of the market in the United States for products that can be nowhere else produced with such certainty and profusion as in California. That State is only just learning how to supply a demand which is daily increasing, but it already begins to command the market in certain fruits. This command of the market in the future will depend upon itself, that is, whether it will send East and North only sound wine, instead of crude, ill-cured juice of the grape, only the best and most carefully canned apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums,only the raisins and prunes perfectly prepared, only such oranges, lemons, and grapes and pears as the Californians are willing to eat themselves. California has yet much to learn about fruit-raising and fruit-curing, but it already knows that to compete with the rest of the world in our markets it must beat the rest of the world in quality. It will take some time yet to remove the unfavorable opinion of California wines produced in the East by the first products of the vineyards sent here.
DATE-PALM.DATE-PALM.
The difficulty for the settler is that he cannot "take up" ten acres with water in California as he can 160 acres elsewhere. There is left little available Government land. There is plenty of government land not taken up and which may never be occupied, that is, inaccessible mountain and irreclaimable desert. There are also little nooks and fertile spots here and there to be discovered which may be pre-empted, and which will some day have value. But practically all the arable land, or that is likely to become so, is owned now in large tracts, under grants or by wholesale purchase. The circumstances of the case compelled associateeffort. Such a desert as that now blooming region known as Pasadena, Pomona, Riverside, and so on, could not be subdued by individual exertion. Consequently land and water companies were organized. They bought large tracts of unimproved land, built dams in the mountain cañons, sunk wells, drew water from the rivers, made reservoirs, laid pipes, carried ditches and conduits across the country, and then sold the land with the inseparable water right in small parcels. Thus the region became subdivided among small holders, each independent, but all mutually dependent as to water, which is thesine qua nonof existence. It is only a few years since there was a forlorn and struggling colony a few miles east of Los Angeles known as the Indiana settlement. It had scant water, no railway communication, and everything to learn about horticulture. That spot is now the famous Pasadena.
What has been done in the Santa Ana and San Gabriel valleys will be done elsewhere in the State. There are places in Kern County, north of the Sierra Madre, where the land produces grain and alfalfa without irrigation, where farms can be bought at from five to ten dollars an acre—land that will undoubtedly increase in value with settlement and also by irrigation. The great county of San Diego is practically undeveloped, and contains an immense area, in scattered mesas and valleys, of land which will produce apples, grain, and grass without irrigation, and which the settler can get at moderate prices. Nay, more, any one with a little ready money, who goes to Southern California expecting to establish himself and willing to work, will be welcomed and aided, and be pretty certain to find some place where he can steadily improve his condition.But the regions about which one hears most, which are already fruit gardens and well sprinkled with rose-clad homes, command prices per acre which seem extravagant. Land, however, like a mine, gets its value from what it will produce; and it is to be noted that while the subsidence of the "boom" knocked the value out of twenty-feet city lots staked out in the wilderness, and out of insanely inflated city property, the land upon which crops are raised has steadily appreciated in value.
So many conditions enter into the price of land that it is impossible to name an average price for the arable land of the southern counties, but I have heard good judges place it at $100 an acre. The lands, with water, are very much alike in their producing power, but some, for climatic reasons, are better adapted to citrus fruits, others to the raisin grape, and others to deciduous fruits. The value is also affected by railway facilities, contiguity to the local commercial centre, and also by the character of the settlement—that is, by its morality, public spirit, and facilities for education. Every town and settlement thinks it has special advantages as to improved irrigation, equability of temperature, adaptation to this or that product, attractions for invalids, tempered ocean breezes, protection from "northers," schools, and varied industries. These things are so much matter of personal choice that each settler will do well to examine widely for himself, and not buy until he is suited.
Some figures, which may be depended on, of actual sales and of annual yields, may be of service. They are of the district east of Pasadena and Pomona, but fairly represent the whole region down to Los Angeles.The selling price of raisin grape land unimproved, but with water, at Riverside is $250 to $300 per acre; at South Riverside, $150 to $200; in the highland district of San Bernardino, and at Redlands (which is a new settlement east of the city of San Bernardino), $200 to $250 per acre. At Banning and at Hesperia, which lie north of the San Bernardino range, $125 to $150 per acre are the prices asked. Distance from the commercial centre accounts for the difference in price in the towns named. The crop varies with the care and skill of the cultivator, but a fair average from the vines at two years is two tons per acre; three years, three tons; four years, five tons; five years, seven tons. The price varies with the season, and also whether its sale is upon the vines, or after picking, drying, and sweating, or the packed product. On the vines $20 per ton is a fair average price. In exceptional cases vineyards at Riverside have produced four tons per acre in twenty months from the setting of the cuttings, and six-year-old vines have produced thirteen and a half tons per acre. If the grower has a crop of, say, 2000 packed boxes of raisins of twenty pounds each box, it will pay him to pack his own crop and establish a "brand" for it. In 1889 three adjoining vineyards in Riverside, producing about the same average crops, were sold as follows: The first vineyard, at $17 50 per ton on the vines, yielded $150 per acre; the second, at six cents a pound, in the sweat boxes, yielded $276 per acre; the third, at $1 80 per box, packed, yielded $414 per acre.
Land adapted to the deciduous fruits, such as apricots and peaches, is worth as much as raisin land, and some years pays better. The pear and the apple needgreater elevation, and are of better quality when grown on high ground than in the valleys. I have reason to believe that the mountain regions of San Diego County are specially adapted to the apple.
Good orange land unimproved, but with water, is worth from $300 to $500 an acre. If we add to this price the cost of budded trees, the care of them for four years, and interest at eight per cent. per annum for four years, the cost of a good grove will be about $1000 an acre. It must be understood that the profit of an orange grove depends upon care, skill, and business ability. The kind of orange grown with reference to the demand, the judgment about more or less irrigation as affecting the quality, the cultivation of the soil, and the arrangements for marketing, are all elements in the problem. There are young groves at Riverside, five years old, that are paying ten per cent. net upon from $3000 to $5000 an acre; while there are older groves, which, at the prices for fruit in the spring of 1890—$1 60 per box for seedlings and $3 per box for navels delivered at the packing-houses—paid at the rate of ten per cent. net on $7500 per acre.
In all these estimates water must be reckoned as a prime factor. What, then, is water worth per inch, generally, in all this fruit region from Redlands to Los Angeles? It is worth just the amount it will add to the commercial value of land irrigated by it, and that may be roughly estimated at from $500 to $1000 an inch of continuous flow. Take an illustration. A piece of land at Riverside below the flow of water was worth $300 an acre. Contiguous to it was another piece not irrigated which would not sell for $50 an acre. By bringing water to it, it would quickly sellfor $300, thus adding $250 to its value. As the estimate at Riverside is that one inch of water will irrigate five acres of fruit land, five times $250 would be $1250 per inch, at which price water for irrigation has actually been sold at Riverside.
The standard of measurement of water in Southern California is the miner's inch under four inches' pressure, or the amount that will flow through an inch-square opening under a pressure of four inches measured from the surface of the water in the conduit to the centre of the opening through which it flows. This is nine gallons a minute, or, as it is figured, 1728 cubic feet or 12,960 gallons in twenty-four hours, and 1.50 of a cubic foot a second. This flow would cover ten acres about eighteen inches deep in a year; that is, it would give the land the equivalent of eighteen inches of rain, distributed exactly when and where it was needed, none being wasted, and more serviceable than fifty inches of rainfall as it generally comes. This, with the natural rainfall, is sufficient for citrus fruits and for corn and alfalfa, in soil not too sandy, and it is too much for grapes and all deciduous fruits.
It is necessary to understand this problem of irrigation in order to comprehend Southern California, the exceptional value of its arable land, the certainty and great variety of its products, and the part it is to play in our markets. There are three factors in the expectation of a crop—soil, sunshine, and water. In a region where we can assume the first two to be constant, the only uncertainty is water. Southern California is practically without rain from May to December. Upon this fact rests the immense value of its soil, and the certainty that it can supply the rest of the Union with a great variety of products. This certainty must be purchased by a previous investment of money. Water is everywhere to be had for money, in some localities by surface wells, in others by artesian-wells, in others from such streams as the Los Angeles and the Santa Ana, and from reservoirs secured by dams in the heart of the high mountains. It is possible to compute the cost of any one of the systems of irrigation, to determine whether it will pay by calculating the amount of land it will irrigate. The cost of procuring water varies greatly with the situation, and it is conceivable that money can be lost in such an investment, but I have yet to hear of any irrigation that has not been more or less successful.
Farming and fruit-raising are usually games of hazard. Good crops and poor crops depend upon enough rain and not too much at just the right times. A wheat field which has a good start with moderate rain may later wither in a drought, or be ruined by too much water at the time of maturity. And, avoiding all serious reverses from either dryness or wet, every farmer knows that the quality and quantity of the product would be immensely improved if the growing stalks and roots could have water when and only when they need it. The difference would be between, say, twenty and forty bushels of grain or roots to the acre, and that means the difference between profit and loss. There is probably not a crop of any kind grown in the great West that would not be immensely benefited if it could be irrigated once or twice a year; and probably anywhere that water is attainable the cost of irrigation would be abundantly paid in the yield from year to year. Farming in the West with even a little irrigation would not be the game of hazard that it is. And it may further be assumed that there is not a vegetable patch or a fruit orchard East or West that would not yield better quality and more abundantly with irrigation.
RAISIN-CURING.RAISIN-CURING.
But this is not all. Any farmer who attempts to raise grass and potatoes and strawberries on contiguous fields, subject to the same chance of drought or rainfall, has a vivid sense of his difficulties. The potatoes are spoiled by the water that helps the grass, and the coquettish strawberry will not thrive on the regimen that suits the grosser crops. In California, which by its climate and soil gives a greater variety of products than any other region in the Union, the supply of water is adjusted to the needs of each crop, even on contiguous fields. No two products need the same amount of water, or need it at the same time. The orange needs more than the grape, the alfalfa more than the orange, the peach and apricot less than the orange; the olive, the fig, the almond, the English walnut, demand each a different supply. Depending entirely on irrigation six months of the year, the farmer in Southern California is practically certain of his crop year after year; and if all his plants and trees are in a healthful condition, as they will be if he is not too idle to cultivate as well as irrigate, his yield will be about double what it would be without systematic irrigation. It is this practical control of the water theyear round, in a climate where sunshine is the rule, that makes the productiveness of California so large as to be incomprehensible to Eastern people. Even the trees are not dormant more than three or four months in the year.
But irrigation, in order to be successful, must be intelligently applied. In unskilful hands it may work more damage than benefit. Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke, who may always be quoted with confidence, says that the ground should never be flooded; that water must not touch the plant or tree, or come near enough to make the soil bake around it; and that it should be let in in small streams for two or three days, and not in large streams for a few hours. It is of the first importance that the ground shall be stirred as soon as dry enough, the cultivation to be continued, and water never to be substituted for the cultivator to prevent baking. The methods of irrigation in use may be reduced to three. First, the old Mexican way—running a small ditch from tree to tree, without any basin round the tree. Second, the basin system, where a large basin is made round the tree, and filled several times. This should only be used where water is scarce, for it trains the roots like a brush, instead of sending them out laterally into the soil. Third, the Riverside method, which is the best in the world, and produces the largest results with the least water and the least work. It is the closest imitation of the natural process of wetting by gentle rain. "A small flume, eight or ten inches square, of common red-wood is laid along the upper side of a ten-acre tract. At intervals of one to three feet, according to the nature of the ground and the stuff to be irrigated, are bored one-inch holes, witha small wooden button over them to regulate the flow. This flume costs a trifle, is left in position, lasts for years, and is always ready. Into this flume is turned from the ditch an irrigating head of 20, 25, or 30 inches of water, generally about 20 inches. This is divided by the holes and the buttons into streams of from one-sixth to one-tenth of an inch each, making from 120 to 200 small streams. From five to seven furrows are made between two rows of trees, two between rows of grapes, one furrow between rows of corn, potatoes, etc. It may take from fifteen to twenty hours for one of the streams to get across the tract. They are allowed to run from forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The ground is then thoroughly wet in all directions, and three or four feet deep. As soon as the ground is dry enough cultivation is begun, and kept up from six to eight weeks before water is used again." Only when the ground is very sandy is the basin system necessary. Long experiment has taught that this system is by far the best; and, says Mr. Van Dyke, "Those whose ideas are taken from the wasteful systems of flooding or soaking from big ditches have something to learn in Southern California."
As to the quantity of water needed in the kind of soil most common in Southern California I will again quote Mr. Van Dyke: "They will tell you at Riverside that they use an inch of water to five acres, and some say an inch to three acres. But this is because they charge to the land all the waste on the main ditch, and because they use thirty per cent. of the water in July and August, when it is the lowest. But this is no test of the duty of water; the amount actually delivered on the land should be taken. What they actually usefor ten acres at Riverside, Redlands, etc., is a twenty-inch stream of three days' run five times a year, equal to 300 inches for one day, or one inch steady run for 300 days. As an inch is the equivalent of 365 inches for one day, or one inch for 365 days, 300 inches for one day equals an inch to twelve acres. Many use even less than this, running the water only two or two and a half days at a time. Others use more head; but it rarely exceeds 24 inches for three days and five times a year, which would be 72 multiplied by 5, or 360 inches—a little less than a full inch for a year for ten acres."