The sun valley of San Gabriel is one of the brightest spots to be found
in all our bright land, and most of its brightness is wildness—wild
south sunshine in a basin rimmed about with mountains and hills.
Cultivation is not wholly wanting, for here are the choices of all the
Los Angeles orange groves, but its glorious abundance of ripe sun and
soil is only beginning to be coined into fruit. The drowsy bits of
cultivation accomplished by the old missionaries and the more recent
efforts of restless Americans are scarce as yet visible, and when
comprehended in general views form nothing more than mere freckles on
the smooth brown bosom of the Valley.
I entered the sunny south half a month ago, coming down along the cool
sea, and landing at Santa Monica. An hour’s ride over stretches of
bare, brown plain, and through cornfields and orange groves, brought me
to the handsome, conceited little town of Los Angeles, where one finds
Spanish adobes and Yankee shingles meeting and overlapping in very
curious antagonism. I believe there are some fifteen thousand people
here, and some of their buildings are rather fine, but the gardens and
the sky interested me more. A palm is seen here and there poising its
royal crown in the rich light, and the banana, with its magnificent
ribbon leaves, producing a marked tropical effect—not semi-tropical, as
they are so fond of saying here, while speaking of their fruits.
Nothing I have noticed strikes me as semi, save the brusque little bits
of civilization with which the wilderness is checkered. These are
semi-barbarous or less; everything else in the region has a most
exuberant pronounced wholeness. The city held me but a short time, for
the San Gabriel Mountains were in sight, advertising themselves grandly
along the northern sky, and I was eager to make my way into their
midst.
At Pasadena I had the rare good fortune to meet my old friend Doctor
Congar, with whom I had studied chemistry and mathematics fifteen years
ago. He exalted San Gabriel above all other inhabitable valleys, old
and new, on the face of the globe. “I have rambled,” said he, “ever
since we left college, tasting innumerable climates, and trying the
advantages offered by nearly every new State and Territory. Here I have
made my home, and here I shall stay while I live. The geographical
position is exactly right, soil and climate perfect, and everything
that heart can wish comes to our efforts—flowers, fruits, milk and
honey, and plenty of money. And there,” he continued, pointing just
beyond his own precious possessions, “is a block of land that is for
sale; buy it and be my neighbor; plant five acres with orange trees,
and by the time your last mountain is climbed their fruit will be your
fortune.” He then led my down the valley, through the few famous old
groves in full bearing, and on the estate of Mr. Wilson showed me a
ten-acre grove eighteen years old, the last year’s crop from which was
sold for twenty thousand dollars. “There,” said he, with triumphant
enthusiasm, “what do you think of that? Two thousand dollars per acre
per annum for land worth only one hundred dollars.”
[Illustration: SAN GABRIEL VALLEY]
The number of orange trees planted to the acre is usually from
forty-nine to sixty-nine; they then stand from twenty-five to thirty
feet apart each way, and, thus planted, thrive and continue fruitful to
a comparatively great age. J. DeBarth Shorb, an enthusiastic believer
in Los Angeles and oranges, says, “We have trees on our property fully
forty years old, and eighteen inches in diameter, that are still
vigorous and yielding immense crops of fruit, although they are only
twenty feet apart.” Seedlings are said to begin to bear remunerative
crops in their tenth year, but by superior cultivation this long
unproductive period my be somewhat lessened, while trees from three to
five years old may be purchased from the nurserymen, so that the
newcomer who sets out an orchard may begin to gather fruit by the fifth
or sixth year. When first set out, and for some years afterward, the
trees are irrigated by making rings of earth around them, which are
connected with small ditches, through which the water is distributed to
each tree. Or, where the ground is nearly level, the whole surface is
flooded from time to time as required. From 309 trees, twelve years old
from the seed, DeBarth Shorb says that in the season of 1874 he
obtained an average of $20.50 per tree, or $1435 per acre, over and
above the cost of transportation to San Francisco, commission on sales,
etc. He considers $1000 per acre a fair average at present prices,
after the trees have reached the age of twelve years. The average price
throughout the county for the last five years has been about $20 or $25
per thousand; and, inasmuch as the area adapted to orange culture is
limited, it is hoped that this price may not greatly fall for many
years.
The lemon and lime are also cultivated here to some extent, and
considerable attention is now being given to the Florida banana, and
the olive, almond, and English walnut. But the orange interest heavily
overshadows every other, while vines have of late years been so
unremunerative they are seldom mentioned.
This is pre-eminently a fruit land, but the fame of its productions has
in some way far outrun the results that have as yet been attained.
Experiments have been tried, and good beginnings made, but the number
of really valuable, well-established groves is scarce as one to fifty,
compared with the newly planted. Many causes, however, have combined of
late to give the business a wonderful impetus, and new orchards are
being made every day, while the few old groves, aglow with golden
fruit, are the burning and shining lights that direct and energize the
sanguine newcomers.
After witnessing the bad effect of homelessness, developed to so
destructive an extent in California, it would reassure every lover of
his race to see the hearty home-building going on here and the blessed
contentment that naturally follows it. Travel-worn pioneers, who have
been tossed about like boulders in flood time, are thronging hither as
to a kind of a terrestrial heaven, resolved to rest. They build, and
plant, and settle, and so come under natural influences. When a man
plants a tree he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he
rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the
joy of living. He necessarily makes the acquaintance of the sun and the
sky. Favorite trees fill his mind, and, while tending them like
children, and accepting the benefits they bring, he becomes himself a
benefactor. He sees down through the brown common ground teeming with
colored fruits, as if it were transparent, and learns to bring them to
the surface. What he wills he can raise by true enchantment. With slips
and rootlets, his magic wands, they appear at his bidding. These, and
the seeds he plants, are his prayers, and by them brought into right
relations with God, he works grander miracles every day than ever were
written.
The Pasadena Colony, located on the southwest corner of the well-known
San Pasqual Rancho, is scarce three years old, but it is growing
rapidly, like a pet tree, and already forms one of the best
contributions to culture yet accomplished in the county. It now numbers
about sixty families, mostly drawn from the better class of vagabond
pioneers, who, during their rolling-stone days have managed to gather
sufficient gold moss to purchase from ten to forty acres of land. They
are perfectly hilarious in their newly found life, work like ants in a
sunny noonday, and, looking far into the future, hopefully count their
orange chicks ten years or more before they are hatched; supporting
themselves in the meantime on the produce of a few acres of alfalfa,
together with garden vegetables and the quick-growing fruits, such as
figs, grapes, apples, etc., the whole reinforced by the remaining
dollars of their land purchase money. There is nothing more remarkable
in the character of the colony than the literary and scientific taste
displayed. The conversation of most I have met here is seasoned with a
smack of mental ozone, Attic salt, which struck me as being rare among
the tillers of California soil. People of taste and money in search of
a home would do well to prospect the resources of this aristocratic
little colony.
If we look now at these southern valleys in general, it will appear at
once that with all their advantages they lie beyond the reach of poor
settlers, not only on account of the high price of irrigable land—one
hundred dollars per acre and upwards—but because of the scarcity of
labor. A settler with three or four thousand dollars would be penniless
after paying for twenty acres of orange land and building ever so plain
a house, while many years would go by ere his trees yielded an income
adequate to the maintenance of his family.
Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to form
a reliable inducement for very sick people. Most of this class, from
all I can learn, come here only to die, and surely it is better to die
comfortably at home, avoiding the thousand discomforts of travel, at a
time when they are so heard to bear. It is indeed pitiful to see so
many invalids, already on the verge of the grave, making a painful way
to quack climates, hoping to change age to youth, and the darkening
twilight of their day to morning. No such health-fountain has been
found, and this climate, fine as it is, seems, like most others, to be
adapted for well people only. From all I could find out regarding its
influence upon patients suffering from pulmonary difficulties, it is
seldom beneficial to any great extent in advanced cases. The cold sea
winds are less fatal to this class of sufferers than the corresponding
winds further north, but, notwithstanding they are tempered on their
passage inland over warm, dry ground, they are still more or less
injurious.
The summer climate of the fir and pine woods of the Sierra Nevada
would, I think, be found infinitely more reviving; but because these
woods have not been advertised like patent medicines, few seem to think
of the spicy, vivifying influences that pervade their fountain
freshness and beauty.