HOW THE FRUIT PERILS WERE MET.--FURTHER DETAILS OF LOCALITIES.
In the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere I saw evidence of the perils
that attend the culture of the vine and the fruit-tree in all other
countries, and from which California in the early days thought it was
exempt. Within the past three or four years there has prevailed a
sickness of the vine, the cause of which is unknown, and for which no
remedy has been discovered. No blight was apparent, but the vine
sickened and failed. The disease was called consumption of the vine. I
saw many vineyards subject to it, and hundreds of acres of old vines had
been rooted up as useless. I was told by a fruit-buyer in Los Angeles
that he thought the raisin industry below Fresno was ended unless new
planting recovered the vines, and that the great wine fields were about
"played out." The truth I believe to be that the disease is confined to
the vineyards of Old Mission grapes. Whether these had attained the
limit of their active life, and sickened, I do not know. The trouble for
a time was alarming; but new plantings of other varieties of grapes have
been successful, the vineyards look healthful, and the growers expect no
further difficulty. The planting, which was for a time suspended, has
been more vigorously renewed.
The insect pests attacking the orange were even more serious, and in
1887-88, though little was published about it, there was something like
a panic, in the fear that the orange and lemon culture in Southern
California would be a failure. The enemies were the black, the red, and
the white scale. The latter, the _icerya purchasi_, or cottony cushion
scale, was especially loathsome and destructive; whole orchards were
enfeebled, and no way was discovered of staying its progress, which
threatened also the olive and every other tree, shrub, and flower.
Science was called on to discover its parasite. This was found to be the
Australian lady-bug (_vedolia cardinalis_), and in 1888-89 quantities of
this insect were imported and spread throughout Los Angeles County, and
sent to Santa Barbara and other afflicted districts. The effect was
magical. The _vedolia_ attacked the cottony scale with intense vigor,
and everywhere killed it. The orchards revived as if they had been
recreated, and the danger was over. The enemies of the black and the red
scale have not yet been discovered, but they probably will be. Meantime
the growers have recovered courage, and are fertilizing and fumigating.
In Santa Ana I found that the red scale was fought successfully by
fumigating the trees. The operation is performed at night under a
movable tent, which covers the tree. The cost is about twenty cents a
tree. One lesson of all this is that trees must be fed in order to be
kept vigorous to resist such attacks, and that fruit-raising,
considering the number of enemies that all fruits have in all climates,
is not an idle occupation. The clean, handsome English walnut is about
the only tree in the State that thus far has no enemy.
One cannot take anywhere else a more exhilarating, delightful drive than
about the rolling, highly cultivated, many-villaed Pasadena, and out to
the foot-hills and the Sierra Madre Villa. He is constantly exclaiming
at the varied loveliness of the scene--oranges, palms, formal gardens,
hedges of Monterey cypress. It is very Italy-like. The Sierra Madre
furnishes abundant water for all the valley, and the swift irrigating
stream from Eaton Cañon waters the Sierra Madre Villa. Among the peaks
above it rises Mt. Wilson, a thousand feet above the plain, the site
selected for the Harvard Observatory with its 40-inch glass. The
clearness of the air at this elevation, and the absence of clouds night
and day the greater portion of the year, make this a most advantageous
position, it is said, to use the glass in dissolving nebulæ. The Sierra
Madre Villa, once the most favorite resort in this region, was closed.
In its sheltered situation, its luxuriant and half-neglected gardens,
its wide plantations and irrigating streams, it reminds one of some
secularized monastery on the promontory of Sorrento. It only needs good
management to make the hotel very attractive and especially agreeable in
the months of winter.
[Illustration: PACKING CHERRIES, POMONA.]
Pasadena, which exhibits everywhere evidences of wealth and culture, and
claims a permanent population of 12,000, has the air of a winter resort;
the great Hotel Raymond is closed in May, the boarding-houses want
occupants, the shops and livery-stables customers, and the streets lack
movement. This is easily explained. It is not because Pasadena is not an
agreeable summer residence, but because the visitors are drawn there in
the winter principally to escape the inclement climate of the North and
East, and because special efforts have been made for their entertainment
in the winter. We found the atmosphere delightful in the middle of May.
The mean summer heat is 67°, and the nights are always cool. The hills
near by may be resorted to with the certainty of finding as decided a
change as one desires in the summer season. I must repeat that the
Southern California summer is not at all understood in the East. The
statement of the general equability of the temperature the year through
must be insisted on. We lunched one day in a typical California house,
in the midst of a garden of fruits, flowers, and tropical shrubs; in a
house that might be described as half roses and half tent, for added to
the wooden structure were rooms of canvas, which are used as sleeping
apartments winter and summer.
This attractive region, so lovely in its cultivation, with so many
charming drives, offering good shooting on the plains and in the hills,
and centrally placed for excursions, is only eight miles from the busy
city of Los Angeles. An excellent point of view of the country is from
the graded hill on which stands the Raymond Hotel, a hill isolated but
easy of access, which is in itself a mountain of bloom, color, and
fragrance. From all the broad verandas and from every window the
prospect is charming, whether the eye rests upon cultivated orchards and
gardens and pretty villas, or upon the purple foot-hills and the snowy
ranges. It enjoys a daily ocean breeze, and the air is always
exhilarating. This noble hill is a study in landscape-gardening. It is a
mass of brilliant color, and the hospitality of the region generally to
foreign growths may be estimated by the trees acclimated on these
slopes. They are the pepper, eucalyptus, pine, cypress, sycamore,
red-wood, olive, date and fan palms, banana, pomegranate, guava,
Japanese persimmon, umbrella, maple, elm, locust, English walnut, birch,
ailantus, poplar, willow, and more ornamental shrubs than one can well
name.
I can indulge in few locality details except those which are
illustrative of the general character of the country. In passing into
Orange County, which was recently set off from Los Angeles, we come into
a region of less "fashion," but one that for many reasons is attractive
to people of moderate means who are content with independent simplicity.
The country about the thriving village of Santa Ana is very rich, being
abundantly watered by the Santa Ana River and by artesian-wells. The
town is nine miles from the ocean. On the ocean side the land is mainly
agricultural; on the inland side it is specially adapted to fruit. We
drove about it, and in Tustin City, which has many pleasant residences
and a vacant "boom" hotel, through endless plantations of oranges. On
the road towards Los Angeles we passed large herds of cattle and sheep,
and fine groves of the English walnut, which thrives especially well in
this soil and the neighborhood of the sea. There is comparatively little
waste land in this valley district, as one may see by driving through
the country about Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim, Tustin City, etc. Anaheim
is a prosperous German colony. It was here that Madame Modjeska and her
husband, Count Bozenta, first settled in California. They own and occupy
now a picturesque ranch in the Santiago Cañon of the Santa Ana range,
twenty-two miles from Santa Ana. This is one of the richest regions in
the State, and with its fair quota of working population, it will be one
of the most productive.
From Newport, on the coast, or from San Pedro, one may visit the island
of Santa Catalina. Want of time prevented our going there. Sportsmen
enjoy there the exciting pastime of hunting the wild goat. From the
photographs I saw, and from all I heard of it, it must be as picturesque
a resort in natural beauty as the British Channel islands.
Los Angeles is the metropolitan centre of all this region. A handsome,
solid, thriving city, environed by gardens, gay everywhere with flowers,
it is too well known to require any description from me. To the
traveller from the East it will always be a surprise. Its growth has
been phenomenal, and although it may not equal the expectations of the
crazy excitement of 1886-87, 50,000 people is a great assemblage for a
new city which numbered only about 11,000 in 1880. It of course felt the
subsidence of the "boom," but while I missed the feverish crowds of
1887, I was struck with its substantial progress in fine, solid
buildings, pavements, sewerage, railways, educational facilities, and
ornamental grounds. It has a secure hold on the commerce of the region.
The assessment roll of the city increased from $7,627,632 in 1881 to
$44,871,073 in 1889. Its bank business, public buildings, school-houses,
and street improvements are in accord with this increase, and show
solid, vigorous growth. It is altogether an attractive city, whether
seen on a drive through its well-planted and bright avenues, or looked
down on from the hills which are climbed by the cable roads. A curious
social note was the effect of the "boom" excitement upon the birth
rate. The report of children under the age of one year was in 1887, 271
boy babies and 264 girl babies; from 1887 to 1888 there were only 176
boy babies and 162 girl babies. The return at the end of 1889 was 465
boy babies, and 500 girl babies.
[Illustration: OLIVE-TREES SIX YEARS OLD.]
Although Los Angeles County still produces a considerable quantity of
wine and brandy, I have an impression that the raising of raisins will
supplant wine-making largely in Southern California, and that the
principal wine producing will be in the northern portions of the State.
It is certain that the best quality is grown in the foot-hills. The
reputation of "California wines" has been much injured by placing upon
the market crude juice that was in no sense wine. Great improvement has
been made in the past three to five years, not only in the vine and
knowledge of the soil adapted to it, but in the handling and the curing
of the wine. One can now find without much difficulty excellent table
wines--sound claret, good white Reisling, and sauterne. None of these
wines are exactly like the foreign wines, and it may be some time before
the taste accustomed to foreign wines is educated to like them. But in
Eastern markets some of the best brands are already much called for, and
I think it only a question of time and a little more experience when the
best California wines will be popular. I found in the San Francisco
market excellent red wines at $3.50 the case, and what was still more
remarkable, at some of the best hotels sound, agreeable claret at from
fifteen to twenty cents the pint bottle.
It is quite unnecessary to emphasize the attractions of Santa Barbara,
or the productiveness of the valleys in the counties of Santa Barbara
and Ventura. There is no more poetic region on the continent than the
bay south of Point Conception, and the pen and the camera have made the
world tolerably familiar with it. There is a graciousness, a softness, a
color in the sea, the cañons, the mountains there that dwell in the
memory. It is capable of inspiring the same love that the Greek
colonists felt for the region between the bays of Salerno and Naples. It
is as fruitful as the Italian shores, and can support as dense a
population. The figures that have been given as to productiveness and
variety of productions apply to it. Having more winter rainfall than
the counties south of it, agriculture is profitable in most years. Since
the railway was made down the valley of the Santa Clara River and along
the coast to Santa Barbara, a great impulse has been given to farming.
Orange and other fruit orchards have increased. Near Buenaventura I saw
hundreds of acres of lima beans. The yield is about one ton to the acre.
With good farming the valleys yield crops of corn, barley, and wheat
much above the average. Still it is a fruit region, and no variety has
yet been tried that does not produce very well there. The rapid growth
of all trees has enabled the region to demonstrate in a short time that
there is scarcely any that it cannot naturalize. The curious growths of
tropical lands, the trees of aromatic and medicinal gums, the trees of
exquisite foliage and wealth of fragrant blossoms, the sturdy forest
natives, and the bearers of edible nuts are all to be found in the
gardens and by the road-side, from New England, from the Southern
States, from Europe, from North and South Africa, Southern Asia, China,
Japan, from Australia and New Zealand and South America. The region is
an arboreal and botanical garden on an immense scale, and full of
surprises. The floriculture is even more astonishing. Every land is
represented. The profusion and vigor are as wonderful as the variety. At
a flower show in Santa Barbara were exhibited 160 varieties of roses all
cut from one garden the same morning. The open garden rivals the Eastern
conservatory. The country is new and many of the conditions of life may
be primitive and rude, but it is impossible that any region shall not be
beautiful, clothed with such a profusion of bloom and color.
I have spoken of the rapid growth. The practical advantage of this as to
fruit-trees is that one begins to have an income from them here sooner
than in the East. No one need be under the delusion that he can live in
California without work, or thrive without incessant and intelligent
industry, but the distinction of the country for the fruit-grower is the
rapidity with which trees and vines mature to the extent of being
profitable. But nothing thrives without care, and kindly as the climate
is to the weak, it cannot be too much insisted on that this is no place
for confirmed invalids who have not money enough to live without work.