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 innumerableclimates,
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 triumphantenthusiasm, "what do you think of that? Two

thousand dollars per acre per annum for land worth only one hundred
dollars."

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 incomeadequate to the maintenance of his family.
Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to

form a reliableinducement 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.

XI
The San Gabriel Mountains[13]

After saying so much for human culture in my last, perhaps I may now
be allowed a word for wildness--the wildness of this southland, pure

and untamable as the sea.
In the mountains of San Gabriel, overlooking the lowland vines and

fruit groves, Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not
even in the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more

rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure
to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may

be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the
exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive

views, the entire surface is covered with it, from the highest peaks
to the plain. It swoops into every hollow and swells over every

ridge, gracefully complying with the varied topography, in shaggy,
ungovernable exuberance, fairly dwarfing the utmost efforts of human