What temperament is to a man, that climate is to a country. The climate
of California is one of the most delightful in the world.
California possesses the wealth of two zones. The ocean current gives
it a temperate climate and the mountain ranges intercepting and
reflecting the sun’s rays give California a climate distinctly her own.
Fine fruit farms surround San Francisco for fifty miles. Irrigation,
combined with a genial climate, produces the delicious fruit for which
California is justly famed. In the vineyards the vines are pruned low,
from two to four feet high. The Leland Stanford vineyard is one of the
finest on the coast, the low pruned vines with their dark green leaves
and rich purple fruit making a fine contrast to the red brown soil.
California produces more wine to the acre than any other country in the
world. The best American wines come from Sonoma county, the Asti of
America, where a thousand foothills are planted in choice wine grapes,
and where nature supplies all the moisture necessary to perfectly ripen
the fruit.
The vines are planted eight feet apart, intersected by wide avenues,
down which the wagons pass in gathering up the boxes into which the
pickers have tossed the ripe grapes--only well ripened grapes make good
wine. Many of these roadways are lined on either side with olives,
palms and other semi-tropical plants.
The pickers are mostly Swiss and Italian, men of practical experience
in their own countries. They work in groups and keep up a running fire
of jest and fun; ever and anon a happy heart breaks out in native song.
Pitchers of rude crockery are scattered about filled with wine for the
workers.
From San Diego to Dutch Harbor wine flows freely, but yet there is no
drunkenness to speak of.
[Illustration: EARLY MORNING, YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
The interest in a vineyard centers in the winery and the wine cellars.
The grapes are first picked from the stems, then thrown into the great
crushers, the juice flowing away through flumes to the fermenting vats.
Asti boasts the largest wine-tank in the world. It is dug out of the
soft stone which abounds in this country and lined with a thick layer
of cement.
No less interesting is the cool, fragrant wine cellar. Here immense
casks made of red wood stand upright, holding some of them, thirty
gallons of wine.
When California was wild, the entire state was one sweet bee garden.
Wherever a bee might fly, within the confines of this virgin
wilderness, from forest to plain, from mountain to valley, from leafy
glen to piny slope, chalices laden with golden nectar greeted him.
Those halcyon days of our humble brown friend are past. The plow and
the sheep have played havoc with those once beautiful gardens. Now the
lonely bee who would his trade pursue must fly far afield.
Traveling east and south from San Francisco, the fruit ranches are soon
left behind and we enter the wheat district. Here we find no irrigation
ditches. Every farm has a wind-mill, which pumps water for the stock
and also for the orchard and garden. The yield of wheat is low,
averaging only about twenty-five bushels to the acre.
This wheat is not used in the United States, being of a lower grade
than Minnesota and Dakota wheat. It is shipped to the eastern markets,
China, Japan and the Philippines.
We traveled one hundred and fifty miles through this district during
the harvest. The combined harvester and thresher, drawn by forty mules,
cuts a wide swath, threshes the grain at once, sacks it and dumps it on
the ground ready for shipment. The wheat ripens during the dry season
and so thoroughly that it can be threshed immediately after cutting. As
the farmer has no fear of rain at this time of the year, he lets the
sacks lie in the field until he is ready to sell.
The islands of the San Joaquin river are wonderfully fertile and many
of them are under cultivation. The uncultivated islands produce every
year a dense growth of bulrushes. Efforts have been made to utilize
these in various ways.
[Illustration: WAWONA VALLEY.]