the investor should have made up his mind in regard to what branch
of agriculture he wishes to devote himself. For although it is one
of the chief advantages of this soil that it can be made to produce
most of the fruits of the temperate and semi-tropical, and some of
the tropical zones, yet each township or locality has its special
adaptedness for this or that product, and to ignore this is to labor
under disadvantages. Thus, Riverside and vicinity have been found
most favorable to the culture of the orange, because the destructive
scale-bug does not flourish here as it does nearer to the coast. Of
lemons, the finest specimens are grown near the Mexican border, in
San Diego County, which also furnishes some of the best raisins and
olives. Santa Barbara County yields the finest pampas plumes and the
best walnuts, and Los Angeles County is still the wine centre of the
South, notwithstanding the ravages of the mysterious vine disease. The
conclusion, too, is being gradually reached that for vineyards the
foothills are the best localities, since in Europe all the best vines
are raised on the hill-sides. Plants of a distinctly tropical type,
also, like tea, bananas, etc., might perhaps be successfully raised on
the lower foothills, which have an immunity from the light frost that
occasionally, in winter and spring, visits the lowlands near the ocean.
And besides these facts, it is well to know that in the same locality
the soil often presents great differences, so that in a twenty-acre
field one-half may be well adapted for the orange or olive, while the
other half needs a different crop. Above all things, “tenderfeet”
should beware of buying land immediately after the spring rains; for
then the whole face of the country is covered with a rich carpet of
grass and flowers, so that it is difficult to distinguish the good land
from the sand-bottomed site of a former river bed, useless for anything
but cactus.
Finally comes the most important of all questions,—the facilities for
irrigation. Grain, if sown in winter or early spring, ordinarily needs
only the regular rains of the season to reach maturity, and there are
localities where many other crops can be raised without irrigation;
but these are the exception, and as a general thing the semi-tropical
fruits which constitute the specialty of Southern California, need
water for profitable culture. So well is this now understood that it is
a favorite joke of the natives to say that if you pay for the air and
water, they will throw in the land gratis.
[Illustration: FRUIT FARM IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.]
Fortunately there are no fewer than six sources from which crops are
supplied with water, if we include rain. For small vegetable or flower
gardens sufficient water can be raised by means of windmills, which are
kept in brisk motion every afternoon by the sea-breeze in the whole
region within twenty or thirty miles of the ocean, except during two
or three of the “rainy months,” when they are not needed. These mills
also supply the kitchen, and it is curious to note how cold the water
remains in the large tanks exposed all day long to a semi-tropical
sun. Much of the water used in town and orchard is supplied by artesian
wells, which, however, occur only in certain belts, especially in Los
Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, although none of these, I believe,
equal one dug in Sonoma County last winter, which is one hundred and
fifteen feet deep, cost only two hundred dollars, and yields almost
half a million gallons every day.
Rivers of the size of the Sacramento, or those of Oregon, Southern
California has none, but there are some smaller rivers and a large
number of creeks, fed by the mountain snows, which are tapped in two
ways for irrigating purposes,—on the surface and below the bed. The
surface water is often carried many miles in ditches; and wise is the
community which lines its ditch at once with cement, else in summer it
loses almost two-thirds of its water supply by absorption on the way.
The Santa Ana River, which is quite a respectable stream in winter,
and after rains becomes a formidable torrent, liable to overflow its
banks and change its channel (thereby causing boundary disputes), is
in summer tapped so freely that its bed becomes dry, and not a drop
reaches the ocean.
Much more curious than this surface tapping, however, is the
tunnelling, by means of which the water which has buried itself beneath
the sandy river bed, as if to escape the merciless pillaging of the
hot sun and the greedy farmers, is brought to the surface again and
utilized. It is in this way that the Santa Ana River is despoiled of
its last drop, and the value of this procedure may be estimated from
the statement made by the San Bernardino _Times_, that “the Ontario
Land Company has driven a tunnel in under San Antonio Creek, a
distance of nearly eighteen hundred feet, at a cost of about fifty-two
thousand dollars, and they have about two hundred and fifty inches of
water, worth a quarter of a million of dollars.” As it hardly ever
rains during the summer, all the water thus drawn off the rivers in
the irrigating season comes from the springs and the melting snows in
the mountains. This is just about sufficient for the present needs
of the population; but no fears need be entertained for the future,
since, as the rural population increases, it will become profitable to
expend large sums in building reservoirs in the cañons to store the
abundant winter water which now runs to waste in the ocean. In this way
the mountains can be made to yield an absolutely unlimited amount of
water, sufficient to support tens of millions; and the lesson taught
by the Johnstown disaster will prevent the dams from being carelessly
constructed.
III.
THE GREAT AMERICAN PARADISE.
VALUE OF RESERVOIRS—WINTER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—FLOWERS
AND SUNSHINE—WHERE RAIN MEANS “BETTER WEATHER”—DRY AIR AND
SEA-BREEZES—FOGS AND FROST—CALIFORNIA FOR INVALIDS AS COMPARED
WITH ITALY, SPAIN, AND AFRICA—RURAL CITIES OF THE FUTURE—THE
PACIFIC ANDALUSIA—SOME DISADVANTAGES—GOPHERS, DUST-STORMS,
DROUGHT—ENEMIES OF THE ORANGE AND VINE.
That there could be no better way of investing capital than by building
reservoirs is shown by the fact, recently pointed out by the California
State Board of Trade, that ten years ago the lands of Fresno sold at
from three dollars to twenty dollars per acre, while now, with water
on it, the same land sells at from seventy-five to seven hundred and
fifty dollars per acre. Equally great is the gain from an æsthetic
point of view. Without water, four-fifths of Southern California is a
dreary cactus desert during the greater part of the year; with water,
it is a veritable garden grove. Nothing could be more delightful than
to watch the effect of water in this magic climate, when the first
rains fall in October or November. Up to that period everything except
the irrigated garden and orchard oases wears a parched yellow and brown
aspect; but hardly has the rain penetrated a few inches into the soil,
when the grass turns green, and before the eye has become accustomed
to the change, gaudy flowers, gradually increasing in variety and
abundance, spring up on all sides, even on land which appeared to
be pure sand, but which on closer examination proves to be rich in
decomposed vegetable matter. The irrigated gardens have an abundance of
choice flowers all the year round, and the garden of the house where
I lived, though without the slightest pretensions, had in full bloom,
in January, petunias, calla lilies, violets, honeysuckles, geraniums
(six feet in height), stock, California poppy, hyacinths, smilax,
heliotropes, nasturtiums, red, white, yellow, and _green_ roses, etc.
In February a frost nipped the leaves of the bananas, heliotropes, and
nasturtiums, but in a few days they were out again; and of the three
or four subsequent frosts none was heavy enough to injure them, while
the other flowers mentioned grew uninjured all the “winter.” This was
at Anaheim, twelve miles from the sea and twenty-eight miles south of
Los Angeles, and gives a better idea of the climate than columns of
statistics. Nor was it an exceptional year; for there are orange-trees
in the State over eighty years old, and at the San Fernando Rey
Mission olive-trees over a hundred years old, proving that in all
this period there has been no frost sufficiently severe or prolonged
to injure these sensitive trees. In 1880 a little snow fell in Los
Angeles County—just enough to astonish the young folks, who had never
before seen any; nor have they seen any since. The only time when ice
ever forms (never more than a quarter of an inch in thickness) is
immediately before sunrise, and hardly has the sun risen above the
horizon when it disappears again.
To this short duration of the occasional frosts is attributed the
fact that they do not kill the semi-tropical vegetation, as happens
occasionally in Southern Europe; and at nine or ten o’clock the
California farmers may be seen ploughing for their winter wheat,
in shirt-sleeves. Hence sufferers from pulmonary complaints who
cannot endure cold will not know that the thermometer ever reaches
freezing-point if they remain in bed till the sun has been out for half
an hour. Immediately after sunset they will again need the protection
of the house, or of a spring overcoat, as the temperature at that time
suddenly drops ten to thirty degrees. But while the sun shines, they
cannot afford or desire to lose its rays for a single minute. It is
the very luxury of existence to walk, ride, or hunt in the Southern
California February sunshine. The oldest inhabitants, used to it as
they are, cannot help muttering every morning, “What a fine day!”
January, February, March, and April, the very four months which are
the most disagreeable of the twelve in the East, are here the most
perfect: the sky of the deepest blue, the air neither cold nor warm,
exhilarating and laden with the perfumes of orange blossoms and wild
flowers. There are, of course, some disagreeable days, but they are
few and far between, there being but twelve to twenty rainy days in
Los Angeles County during the whole “rainy season” from November to
May, so that invalids hardly ever miss their sun-bath. Dr. C. B. Bates
mentions, in the _Southern California Practitioner_, the case of a
consumptive who kept a record of the weather at Santa Barbara, and
found that in a year there were but fifteen days upon which he was
confined to the house, ten of them being rainy and five windy; and
another case of a lady who, without any other than a brush shelter,
spent all of eighteen months, except nine nights, in the open air.
This will appear the more remarkable in view of a certain peculiarity
of Southern California rains. Elsewhere people often exclaim, “If we
only had fine weather in the daytime, I shouldn’t care how much it
rained at night!” Here this wish is fulfilled, for most of the rain
falls at night. Some will be ready to cry out against the “eternal
monotony” of this sunshine; but on arriving on the ground they will
find this objection purely theoretical, and will be only too glad to
know that they can make projects for work or pleasure, for picnics
or excursions, weeks ahead, with an almost absolute certainty of
having fine weather. Still, there are a few day-showers to break the
“monotony,” and they make up in profusion what they lack in frequency—a
fascinating spectacle to the senses, and still more to the imagination,
which evokes pictures of prosperous grain-fields and lovely
flower-meadows. Surely that must be pronounced an ideal climate for
an invalid and valetudinarian where every rainy day, even during the
so-called rainy season, is regarded as a special dispensation of a kind
Providence, is commented upon in jubilant editorials by the journalists
(who had for some time predicted “better weather,” _i. e._ rain), and
is recorded in telegraphic tables noting the daily rainfall in every
town, to the hundredth of an inch! And be it admitted that there is
ground for this jubilation; for in three years out of ten the rainfall
is insufficient, and then the crops suffer, except where irrigation is
practised.
In this immunity from rain-storms, Southern California possesses a
great advantage over other winter resorts for invalids, but it is only
one out of half-a-dozen advantages which may here be briefly touched
upon. The first and most important is the dryness of the atmosphere,
which favors the rapid radiation of the earth’s heat, so that the
nights are always cool enough for refreshing sleep, even in midsummer;
and sleep is the best of all medicines. So dry is this air that strips
of beef can be jerked in it by simply letting them hang outdoors till
desiccated. And the strangest part of it is that the sea-breeze, which
always blows during the hottest hours of the day, is a dry wind, too—a
circumstance which some have tried to account for by considering it a
sort of undertow, or a wave of air which came from the dry desert lands
to the eastward, and returns thither, absorbing but little moisture
during its brief contact with the ocean. But whatever the cause of this
dryness, it is a great hygienic factor, which this region can play out
as one of its highest trumps against Florida and Italy. No enervating,
malarial swamp winds, no sultriness, such as often makes suicide a
welcome thought in the East, will ever oppress any one in this Western
sanitarium, not even during the rainy spells. Nor has California ever
suffered from yellow fever, like Florida, or from the cholera, which
is a frequent menace in Spain, Italy, and Sicily. Again, on the shores
of the Mediterranean, in Europe as well as in Africa, the invalid will
find it almost impossible to obtain comfortable lodgings and proper
food, except in the large cities, while in California he can find home
comforts in any village and many farmhouses in the midst of the wildest
scenery and purest air. Never will his nostrils be offended here by the
pestilential odors which poison the air within a radius of several
miles of Italian and Spanish cities; nor will he ever be compelled
by the muddy condition of the streets to take his walks all winter
long on the roof of the hotel, as the proprietor of the Continental
at Tangier told me some of his invalid winter-guests did. What a life
compared with the floral walks, the hunting, fishing, and picnicking
on the dry ground and under the blue, rainless sky of Los Angeles or
San Diego County! Surely, Southern California is destined to become the
sanitarium, not only of America, but of Europe as well.
What makes the fulfilment of this prophecy the more probable is the
circumstance that California is an all-the-year-round sanitarium, and
not one of the mere winter resorts which compel the unwilling invalids
to pack up and seek a new clime, when May is gone. No one would dream
of spending the summer at Malaga, Cannes, Naples, Palermo, Algiers,
or Jacksonville, exposed to a sultry, malarial atmosphere, and the
danger of deadly epidemics; whereas California has countless places
where summer and winter are alike, or rather alike unknown, the only
season known being an eternal spring. Many residents in our Eastern and
Middle States have often wondered what has become of the spring, which
used to form one of our seasons. It has followed the general tide of
immigration, has gone West, and may now be found in riotous exuberance
along the coast and the foothills of California. Not that all parts of
Southern California are as exempt from a summer season as they are of
winter. On the contrary, there are many most desirable winter resorts
which invalids and tourists will be only too glad to abandon in June,
such as Riverside, and other places too far in the interior to get
the benefit of the afternoon sea-breezes. Even so near the sea as Los
Angeles, it is by no means pleasant to be exposed directly to the rays
of the July sun; yet, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere,—which,
moreover, increases as the heat increases,—100° is not so oppressive
here as 90° in New York. Besides, in the East there is no refuge from
the all-pervading heat, except in a cellar; whereas here one needs
only to step in the shade to find relief, the difference between the
sunny and the shady side of a house running as high as 30°. Finally,
as Southern California has an average width of only forty miles, it
takes only an hour or two to reach the sea-coast, where it is always
pleasant; and cool mountain resorts are equally accessible everywhere,
as can be seen by a glance at the map, which is blackened by groups and
chains of mountains, attaining in the San Bernardino range a height
of over eleven thousand feet. No wonder that camping is the favorite
pastime of the Californian in summer, and not only of the wealthy; for
as the farmer does all his work in winter, he can lie fallow in summer,
like his somnolent fields, and pitch his tent along any beach or cañon
he chooses; and camp-life is so inexpensive, especially when rod and
rifle are available, that the poorest can indulge in this luxury during
the warmest months.
Surely, when the human race cuts its wisdom teeth, it will no longer
crowd into dirty, noisy, malodorous cities, but will seek health and
fresh air all the year round. Southern California will loom up more
and more as an ideal place for building up a vast city in the country,
so to speak,—a city in which each house will be surrounded by ten or
twenty acres of irrigated land, capable of producing all the fruits
and vegetables, eggs and poultry, needed by the family, and shaded
by one of the fifty varieties of eucalyptus-trees already imported
from Australia, or by the spacious pepper-tree, and a small orange,
peach, and fig orchard. Such a city could be built up in a few years,
with shade and all. Elsewhere when people plant trees, they do so
for the benefit of posterity; here a row of the eucalyptus will grow
in a few years large enough to afford abundance of shade. Noiseless
electric railways will traverse this country town in every direction,
bringing the scattered population to the business places and centres of
amusement. But they will not crave the artificial excitements of city
life as they do now; for when there are no excursions to the sea or the
mountains, the fascinating care of the orange groves and flower gardens
will absorb all the leisure moments. What novel, what theatrical play,
could afford so much amusement as the daily irrigation of a flower-bed,
and noticing how the plants grow visibly and in a few weeks develop
into exotic wildernesses of tropical and semi-tropical flowers of the
most gorgeous colors and unheard-of size? Or watching a rose-bush as
it gradually intertwines itself among the branches of an orange-tree,
which some morning will present the bewitching spectacle of a tree
bearing red roses, white orange blossoms, and golden oranges all at the
same time? Or sitting under this orange-tree in February, listening to
a mocking-bird perched on its branches, and reading in your paper about
the blizzards and storms of the East, and the tornadoes and cyclones
which you know will never visit your home? Why should our novelists
lay the scenes of their tales in Andalusia when we have an Andalusia
of our own here on the Pacific Coast? At one time it formed part of
the so-called Great American Desert, but in the next century it will be
known as the Great American Paradise.
Yet let not the coming population of the Pacific Andalusia fancy
that they will be spared all the trials and annoyances of life. Even
Southern California has its disadvantages,—quite enough to prevent it
from degenerating into a Utopia. Thus you will some morning be standing
in your garden admiring your favorite banana bush. Suddenly it will
tremble and sink into the ground a foot or two. Earthquakes are not
unknown in this region, but they don’t “strike in one place” like that.
No, it was one of those irrepressible gophers, the terror of the rural
Californian. They will eat the roots of your fruit trees and choicest
flowers, regardless of expense; and though cats and traps will catch
them, and irrigation drowns them, the neighboring fields always furnish
a fresh supply; and what is worse, their subterranean passages from
these fields serve as tunnels which carry off your water, and make
you pay twice as much for irrigation as you would have needed but for
those holes. Then there are scale-bugs of all colors, which attack your
orange-trees and have to be sprayed off; and a mysterious disease which
kills your vines; and small green insects which eat up your flowers and
buds so that you need a whole drug store to combat them. Rabbits will
eat your vegetables and grape-vines, and the quails will feed on your
grapes; and, to add insult to injury, the Los Angeles sporting clubs
have succeeded in passing a law which prevents you from shooting these
birds at a time when it would do most to protect your crops. However,
if you are a sportsman, you will forgive and observe this law, which
enables you at other times to shoot at a flock of quail in your own
vegetable garden, though you live in a town of two or three thousand
inhabitants.
The desolate appearance which all the unirrigated parts of the country
present after May must also be reckoned among the disadvantages of
this climate; for a sensitive soul can hardly help feeling pity for
the drooping, parched vegetation, especially after having noticed how
eagerly it drinks in the first rain of the autumn, with as much evident
enjoyment as a Bavarian emptying his mug of beer at a draught. Nor
can one help admitting that the orange groves and eucalyptus avenues,
delightful as they are, cannot entirely atone for the absence of green
forests; for Southern California, except in the foothills, is as
treeless as Spain—which it resembles in so many other respects,—and a
single oak-tree has more than once furnished the nucleus of a town.
The higher mountains are as bare of trees as the valleys, but this
is compensated for by the consequent greater clearness and variety
of the sculptured outlines, and by the snows which fall during every
rainstorm, sometimes extending almost down to the foothills. In the
clear southern atmosphere these mountains, though they be fifty or
sixty miles away, seem to be almost within a stone’s throw; and as they
are visible everywhere, they constitute one of the greatest charms of
Southern California. Once in a while, however, this view is spoiled for
a day or two by one of those desert winds and sand-storms which are the
most annoying feature of this climate, and are known as the Norther,
or the “Santa Ana” wind, as the Anaheimers call it, in order to give a
hated rival town a bad name. Without being a hurricane, or even a gale,
this wind reaches a considerable velocity, is as dry and warm as if
it came from an oven, and raises clouds of dust which obscure the sun
and mountains as effectually as the smoke of the forest fires does in
Oregon, and a film of which even lines the waters of the Pacific to a
considerable distance from the shore. If I finally mention that this
dust, even when it lies quietly on the ground two or three inches thick
during seven or eight months of the year, is by no means a desirable
thing to have about, I shall have mentioned all the serious blemishes
that I could discover on the face of this fair country; and they are
so insignificant compared with its attractions that I have given them
the advantage of having the last word in this chapter, confident that
they cannot essentially modify the opinion therein expressed as to the
future of Southern California.
IV.
THE HOME OF THE ORANGE.
THE GERMAN COLONY AT ANAHEIM—RABBIT-HUNTING IN THE CACTUS
FIELDS—COWS AND ORANGES—THE BEST CALIFORNIA ORANGE—RIVERSIDE AND
ITS MODEL ORCHARDS—ORANGE-PICKING—A WONDERFUL AVENUE—LOCAL FLAVOR
IN ORANGES—AN ENGLISH COLONY—HOW PROHIBITION PROHIBITS—SCENES
BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND SAN DIEGO.