# Mexico, California and Arizona/Chapter 28

XXVIII.
LOS ANGELES.
I.
Over the Tehachapi Pass, we are in Southern California proper. We have met already, it is true, with pretty Spanish names, old missions, leather breeches, jingling spurs, vineyards, raisin-making, and occasional orange and palm trees. But when the dividing mountain-range, four thousand feet above the sea at Tehachapi, is passed, all these are found in their greatest development. The country is older, the Spanish names are more musical; orange and lemon are not grown for ornament, but as a principal crop; and the climate is of that genial mildness which is most to the taste of seekers for health.
Famed Los Angeles, City of the Angels, is the terminus of the first day's journey which brings us into it. The watering-place of Santa Monica and the important points of San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara are not far distant to the west, while San Diego lies at a moderate remove to the southward, near the Mexican frontier. In the intervals scatter colonies of vine and orange growers, the numbers and dimensions of which are rapidly increasing.
The mountain barrier across the State is deemed by some to be of such importance that it should be a political as well as a natural division. They call for the con​struction of a distinct new State, to be called South California, its capital at Los Angeles.
TEHACHAPI PASS.
"We are different peoples," writes one of them in the Californian. "We are different in pursuits, in tastes, manner of thought, and manner of life; . . . our hopes and aspirations for the future are different. The restless, uneasy population of the North, ever drifting, without local attachments, has no counterpart in Southern California; neither has the wild spirit of min-
​ing speculation ever flourished here. With this peaceable life, possibly in part as a result of it, there has grown up in the people an intense love of their land.
"And it is for their own section of the State," he goes on, "that this love exists. They call themselves, not Californians, but Southern Californians. The feeling is intense. I can only liken it to the overmastering love of the old Greek for the sunny shores that lay around the Ægean.
"For myself, I feel more and more each time that I visit the upper portion of the State that I am going into a strange land. And the impression never leaves me till upon my return I look down from the crest of the Tehachapi over the warm South-land."
I have thought it worth while to quote these passages, partly because they are amusing, partly because they accentuate the topographical situation, and also because they describe a character exactly opposite to that which exists. Everywhere is bustle, push, and enterprise. This people will sell you a corner lot or quarter-section of land with as great a gusto as any other, and at its full value. Whatever effect lapse of time may have upon them, the present inhabitants, few of whom are born here or even drafted from indolent climes, if lotus-eaters, are of a very wide-awake sort.
II.
The City of the Angels is, in general, only another San José, upon a more hilly site. Its population must be about fourteen thousand. The long thoroughfare of Main Street proceeds, from the depot, at first through a shabby Spanish quarter, locally known as "Sonora," consisting of one-story, whitewashed, adobe houses. Passing ​a small Spanish plaza, set with pointed cypresses, and the principal hotel, the Pico House, it becomes lined with excellent buildings of the modern pattern. Of these the handsome "Baker Block" is most notable. Continuing to the ornate "Los Angeles Bank," Spring Street diverges at a small angle, and contributes, with Main Street, to give the commercial skeleton of the town the shape of a Y with a very long stem.
On Spring Street you find a common little post-office, the municipal offices, and a brown, Dutch-looking, brick building, standing free, originally constructed for a market, and now the Court-house. If you look into the lobby of the small adobe jail you will find that some leisurely prisoner of the frescoer's trade has converted it into a resemblance to a dungeon scene at the theatre. These two streets, with a shorter one, Los Angeles Street, parallel to Main, containing fruit and produce commission houses, comprise the commercial portion of the city.
New buildings are seen going up; the shops are large and well-appointed, and placards offer, in the usual shibboleth of trade, "To Reduce Stock!" "At Wholesale Slaughter," and "For the Next Sixty Days."
A serious depression afflicted Los Angeles in 1875, at the time of the general depression throughout the State, but that has been succeeded by a new reign of activity. Trim, large residences of the more prosperous merchants are seen in the outskirts of the town. Farther out yet these become villas, in the midst of plantations of orange and lemon, ruled off into formal plots by ditches for irrigation. The class of modest means abide in the side streets, in frame cottages. The German Turn-hall serves also the purpose of theatre for such companies as come this way.
MAIN STREET, LOS ANGELES
ton, thirty miles away, should now, upon the completion of the Southern Pacific railroad, the entrepôt and Pacific terminus of a new commercial departure. San Francisco, it is said, has too long sat at the Golden Gate "levying toll on every pound of freight that passes through," and this selfish greed is to be properly rebuked by the diversion of a part of its trade. Enthusiastic San Diego expects also to have its share. The wickedness of the proceeding would seem to depend largely upon who it is
​that takes the toll. Los Angeles, it is held, is to be the Lyons, and San Diego the Marseilles, of the State, San Francisco still remaining its Paris.
The pepper-tree, with its scarlet berries and fern-like leaves, forms the leading shade and ornament of Los Angeles streets. Apart from these a clump of palms grows on San Pedro Street, and, before an odd, octagon-shaped house on Main Street, a Mexican nopal of the size of an apple-tree. In the court-yard of the principal hotel droops a single ragged banana. Tropical features in the vegetation are scarce, but it is evident that this is not the fault of the climate, but of failure to encourage them. In the door-yards are the Mexican aloe and the Spanish bayonet, from the adjacent deserts of Mohave and Arizona. The castor-oil plant grows a tall weed in neglected places. The extraction of castor-oil was at one time an industry of the place, but is now abandoned.
III.
The Mexican element must be something like one-third of the entire population of the place. In the Spanish town, "Sonora," the recollection of Mexico is revived, but a very shabby, provincial Mexico. You find mescal and tequila, the two varieties of intoxicating liquor distilled from the maguey, or aloe. The dingy little adobe shops contain samples of dingy little stocks of goods in their shuttered loop-holes of windows. A few swarthy, lantern-jawed old-timers hang about the corners, and gossip in patois, and women with black shawls over their heads pass by. Much of the quarter is in a ruinous condition. There remain vestiges of the arcade system of the kind known in some form to all tropical or semi-tropical climates. The arcades of Sonora are not of massive ​brick and stone, but are wooden roofs, such as are put out by our corner grocers, on light wooden posts. Here and there only the battered skeletons remain, attached to ruinous houses. Most California municipalities have borrowed something of this Spanish idea. At Sacramento, the thriving but flat and unattractive capital of the State, you can walk nearly all over the business part of town under cover.
There is a very respectable-looking restaurant a vine-embowered cottage opposite the Pico House, where the familiar tortillas, or pancakes, and frijoles, or stewed beans, may be had. Along-side is an adobe church, quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of further interest. From its belfry the chimes jangle loudly several times a day in familiar Mexican fashion. Out of Sonora emerges, on the 16th of September, the Juarez Guard, which escorts a triumphal car bearing the national colors of red, white, and green, and, aided by a cortége of dark little maidens, in white muslin and slippers, proceeds to celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mexican independence.
This people, who have gone so much to the wall, wear no very pathetic aspect in their adversity. They are for the most part engaged in coarse labor, are improvident, and apparently contented. It is only rarely that a Spanish name a—Pacheco, a Sepulveda, or Estudillo—rises into prominence in the public affairs of the State of which they were once owners. Old Don Pio Pico, the last of the Spanish Governors, resides here, impoverished, in a little cottage, in sight of property of great value which was formerly his, and of the plaza once the centre of his authority.
Don Pio is one of the picturesque features of Los Angeles, and with his history would be esteemed interesting ​anywhere. Above eighty years of age, with stocky figure, square head, and bright eyes, contrasting with his bronzed skin and close-cropped white hair and beard, he has a certain resemblance to Victor Hugo. He has a rather florid taste for jewelry. He carries himself about town, in his short overcoat with velvet collar and cuffs, with a bearing still erect and stately. It is strange to tell, but true, and
DON PIO PICO.
it is evidence of the conservatism and lack of adaptability of his race, that the old gentleman, though once Governor of the State, and a continuous resident of it, as an American citizen, since he surrendered it to Fremont and Stockton in 1847, does not yet speak a word of any other language than Spanish. The talk of this historic personage gave but a rude picture of the state of society in his youth. Was there anything in the world so remote as the California of the years 1810 to 1848? ​"I am but a plain and unassuming person," he said to me. "My father did not leave me a mule nor a vara of ground. I worked for the padres at the San Gabriel Mission when I was a boy, and I had little opportunity to learn book knowledge."
He disclaimed being an authority even on the events of his own fall and the encroachments of the Americans. " There are many," he said, "who have a better head for those things than I, and who will tell you better' than I." . ..."I was a just man, however. I treated the rich no better than the poor. Hence when they asked who was lo mas justo y honrado the most just and honest man—for Governor, it was answered with one accord, 'Don Pio Pico.'"
There are differences of opinion about those ancient officials. Some of them have been charged with a whole-sale issue of land-patents after the American occupation, which patents ostensibly belonged to their respective administrations. Edwin M. Stanton, sent out to look into these matters by the Attorney-general of the United States, reported at the time that "the making of false grants, with the subornation of false witnesses to prove them, has become a trade and a business."
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1847, by which the war with Mexico was concluded, made valid and of full force whatever had been done before the American occupation. Spanish governors were numerous in those last days, and went in and out of office with extraordinary frequency, by reason of plots, counterplots, and the inability of the home government to enforce its own will. Alvarado, Carillo, Micheltorena, and Pio Pico reigned separately, or together, or by turns, in a evolutionary, confused, and overlapping way, which furnished excellent opportunity for fraud. One prefers, however, not to lin-
MONGOLIAN AND MEXICAN.
ger upon unpleasant suspicions, but rather to esteem these fallen dignitaries, few of whom now survive after their misfortunes and romantic histories.
Even the Chinese, singularly enough, show greater enterprise than the Spanish. Perhaps they may have a somewhat better warrant for coming in here than elsewhere, since a Chinaman is found in the list of the twelve original settlers of the town, in 1781. They have pushed into the best of the old Spanish adobe houses, once the best of their kind in the State. They occupy all those which flank the little plaza with an entire street, others debouching from it.
The populace, however, have not always been so well ​reconciled to the Mongolians. In an outburst of deadly prejudice, in the year 1871, they were dragged out of their Spanish houses and hung to lamp-posts, wagon-tongues, and their own door-ways, to the number of eighteen, of all ages and sizes. The riot was occasioned by their resistance to some process of a deputy-sheriff. My informant described them to me as hanging like bunches of carrots.
At present they were putting up, near the site of these sanguinary scenes, an ornate open-air theatre or temple, for a triennial religious festival, to last a week or more.
IV.
One of my pleasantest days at Los Angeles was that which I spent in a drive with the Zanjero.
The Zanjero, indeed! who or what is a Zanjero? His title is derived from the Spanish zanja—ditch—continued down from the times of the original settlement, and he is the official overseer of water and irrigation. He took me about with him to observe this important and entertaining part of the economy of civilization in these thirsty regions. Not that Los Angeles is so dry in comparison, for it has thirteen inches of rain against two at Bakersfield, but it is in abundant need of irrigation.
The Zanjero is elected by the City Council annually. Six deputies aid him in the summer, reduced to three in the winter, when the rains render irrigation hardly necessary. All are invested with the authority and badges of policemen.
The city, the Zanjero tells us, as we ride along, controls in its corporate capacity all the waters of the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles River is a Southern ​California stream of the typical sort. It has a wide, shallow bed, almost dry at the moment, but in spring and winter it brawls in dangerous fashion, and often carries away its bridges. We ride up to the point near a certain railroad bridge where the water is first diverted. It is taken out by two small canals, one for the city proper, one for the thriving suburb of East Los Angeles. We find that the dam by which the river is checked for this purpose is constructed of earth, with a facing of stout posts and planking. At the beginning of winter the planking is removed, and the stream allowed to sweep away the rampart of earth, which is replaced by a new one, the succeeding spring. Chain-gangs of convicts from the prison are set upon this labor.
A canal is taken out of the same river twelve miles above, which supplies water for drinking and irrigating the higher levels. There are two very different levels in the configuration of the city, one rising from the other with great abruptness, as at Santa Cruz.
Upon the height are remains of the fort built by Fremont when he entered the city. Directly at its foot is the cottage of Pio Pico; the big hotel, still bearing his name, in which he sunk a handsome share of his fortune; the little cypress-studded plaza; and the shabby white quarter of Sonora. The mass of the city lies to the right, without striking features. Beyond it, toward the river, stretch breadths of a russet bloom which we know to be vineyards, together with lines and parallelograms of orange and eucalyptus, as formal as the conventional trees in boxes of German toys. Across the river, "Brooklyn Heights" and "Boyle Heights" rise to a wide, rolling table-land (mesa) which extends back to the blue Sierra Madre Mountains. Toward most of the horizon stretch expanses of a garden-like vegetation of ​a mysterious quality—the dreamed-of orange-groves in mass.
The city has created a considerable part of its debt by its water system, in which it has spent probably $200,000. The works are of an ephemeral character, which will in time be replaced by something more substantial. The simple trenches and wooden flumes permit waste of water, and are costly to keep in repair. One of the principal ditches, however, is carried through a hill some three-quarters of a mile in a tunnel of six feet in section. There have been formed also numbers of durable reservoirs or artificial lakes for the storage of additional water in winter to supplement the river at its lowest.
We rode out among the villas and gardens and observed the practical application of the water. The main ditches are three feet by two, the lesser about two by one. The "head" is the nominal standard of measurement of the babbling fluid. The head should be a section of one hundred square inches, delivered under a certain uniform pressure, but it is in practice loosely administered.
"The irrigators want their work done" says the Zanjero; "that is the main point. Some lands take more, others less, according as they are sandy or hold water. A head of fifty inches on the east side will do as much as one hundred and twenty around the city."
Fan-palms, India-rubber-trees, and tall bananas grow freely on the lawns where a little pains is taken. You stop now to exclaim at a comfortable home embowered in myrtle, orange, and vines, the dark, glossy foliage starred with golden fruit and red roses, a spot for any romance. Again, it is a long arcade or temple of arbor-vitæ, extending across the whole front of a garden, and ​framing in its arches delicious views of distant blue mountains, their tops now powdered with snow.
This land of running brooks should be a famous place for the children to sail their boats, though as a matter of fact we do not see them doing it. Perhaps there is a law against it. There are laws, at any rate, against stealing the water, wantonly raising the gates to waste it, or transferring it to irrigators outside the city limits. These latter are entitled to it only upon an extra payment and after those within the city have been supplied.
As all irrigators cannot be supplied at once, the manner of serving it out is as follows: Applications have to be made in the last week of each month. The Zanjero then apportions the supply so that it may go round among the applicants in the most convenient way. The complete circuit takes about twenty days. The applicant receives a ticket, on the payment of a fee, entitling him to receive the water on such a day at such an hour. The right for that time is exclusively his. The rates are so fixed as to reimburse the public treasury, and are not intended as a source of profit. The average charge for water is about fifty cents an hour, two dollars a day, and a dollar and twenty-five cents a night.
The subscriber has the water delivered to him by the deputy at his connecting-gate. At all other times the gate must be kept fastened with a padlock. The wooden gate, sliding smoothly in its grooves, is like a little guillotine.
Chop! goes the guillotine, when it has been raised long enough, and off goes the head, as it were, of the little stream. Thus surprised on its way among the orchards and gardens, it writhes and twists a while, rises again in its confining box, and is soon ready to begin life again on a new basis. ​
V.
Los Angeles is the metropolis of the orange trade, but the greater part of the culture itself is in tracts of the surrounding country, each with a thriving settlement as its nucleus. The lands are usually laid out and subdivided by capitalists, under the "colony" system, as described. Ten or even five acres in a crop of such value are a comfortable property. On Lake Guarda half an acre in lemons is sufficient for the support of a family. It is in evidence here that returns of from $500 to $1000 an acre are had from orange, lemon, arid lime, after the trees have arrived at full bearing.
The piazzas of the orange-planters command attractive views; rose and heliotrope bloom round them; and specimens of all the fruits are offered for our tasting with lavish hospitality and honest pride in their perfection.
We begin with Pasadena, which is reached by a drive of ten miles from Los Angeles. Pasadena, the Indiana Colony, San Gabriel, the Lake Vineyard tract, the Alhambra, Santa Anita, and Sierra Madre tracts, and others, all of the same general character, adjoin one another. The dwellings in them are those of people of means and a certain taste. Even the least show ambition. There are pretty chapels in the Gothic style, and neat school-houses. Well-dressed children of a city air are met with on the roads. The roads are excellent. No violent storms or thawing snows in this climate tear them up, and they are kept in order with little trouble.
The door-yards are enclosed with hedges of lime, arbor-vitae, or rose-bushes. Curious small circles from time to time attract attention, either filled with water, or dry, like the rings of a departed circus. These are reservoirs, supplementing the irrigation system. They are usually ​filled by artesian wells, which flow from iron pipes a few feet above the ground, the water overspreading the top in a thin film, like a globe of glass, reflecting neighboring objects. Such globe-like films, sparkling from a distance, are a frequent item in the prospect. As there has never been any forest, no unsightly stumps indicate recent clearings. The country, in consequence, does not look new. Where settled at all, it has a surprisingly old and civilized air.
The temperature, this late November day—on which there are telegrams in the papers of snow-storms at the North and East—is perfection. It is neither hot nor cold. A sybarite would not alter it. Bees hum in the profuse clusters of heliotrotpe about the porches. A single Jacqueminot rose on a tall stem, a beauty whose sway will not be gainsaid, makes its vivid crimson felt from the greensward a long way off. Among the older estates this is pointed out as the home of "Don Benito," that of "Don Tomas," so and so, the family name being usually American. Audacious in love as in other things, enterprising Americans have married into the Spanish families, both before and since the conquest, and succeeded to their acres. Very few of Spanish stock still retain any property of note.
If there be or ever existed any real earthly Paradise, I think it might bear some such complexion as that of the Sierra Madre Villa, on the first bold rise of the mountains at San Gabriel. I cannot vouch for it as a hotel, for hotel it is, but I vouch for it as a situation.
PARADISE.
gale, had been denuded of their leaves, which left only the globes of golden fruit, a lovely decorative effect, on their bare stems. A view of thirty miles is had across the garden-like San Gabriel Valley, to a strip of blue sea on the horizon. On the strip of blue sea rests a slight brown spot, the jewel of Santa Catalina Island.
Flowering vines clustered along a piazza, part enclosed in glass. In a warm nook a couple reclined in steamer-chairs, one reading aloud a novel in a gentle murmur. They were a couple of recent date, and as the place for a ​honey-moon it was ideal. The orange bears a close resemblance to the formal tree which the mediæval painters used to represent as the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" of Genesis. It is appropriately placed, therefore, in our earthly Paradise.
Hist! The young woman who had been reading takes her stand archly at one side of such a tree. The man who had been listening rises also, and, with a slight yawn, places himself on the other. Oh, what is this? Is she a new Eve? She plucks a fruit, and hands it to him. Oh, this is terrible! Is there to be a fall again in Eden, and all its direful consequences? There should be some Cranach or Dürer here to take down once more the particulars of the distressing scene. What does Eve wish Adam to do? Perhaps she wishes him to buy lands—above their value—and go into orange-planting himself. Alas he will be lost forever to the higher financial life. Perhaps Satan is the invidious real-estate man.
But really there is no pressing need of such a display of fancy because a young matron offers her husband a fresh orange before dinner.
Certain drawbacks—drawbacks attending upon an injudicious entering into this apparently fascinating kind of life should not be overlooked. The orange-tree grows all the time, and calls for incessant care, winter as in summer. Not a few invalids who had looked to its culture as a pastime have broken down through this cause, and through having taken up more land than they could manage. The lesson of such cases is, not to attempt too much, but to keep to the five, or ten, acres, as the case may be, within one's capacity. Nor has it been politic to put everything into the single crop of oranges. The smaller fruits—peaches, plums, and especially apricots—for canning, which come into bearing quickly, are useful in ​tiding over the tedious period of waiting for the orange-trees to mature, and are always in profitable demand. To start existence comfortable here the new-comer should have a capital of from five to ten thousand dollars, though peculiar energy may do with less.
It requires about nine years to bring an orange-tree from the seed into full bearing. On the other hand, it is found that by deftly inserting an orange-bud into the bark of a lemon-shoot slitted in an X, and setting this in the ground, a tree can be obtained which bears marketable fruit after the second year. The controversy rages as to whether it is worth while to do this, since the product is dwarf, like the dwarf pear-tree. Though it yield early it will never yield much, and its fruit does not stand shipment as well as that of the seedling. Against this it is maintained that it lives longer than the seedling, and yields choicer varieties of fruit, and that the fruit is more uniform in size and quality, and not subject to a singular form of destruction which sometimes overtakes that of the seedling—being dashed upon its own thorns.
In the same way conflicting theories of irrigation prevail. A person who bought grapes in large quantities for the purpose of making them into wine told me that over-irrigation was rendering them watery and insipid. He proposed to meet this by establishing a standard. He would pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes containing twenty-three per cent. of sugar, and for those below standard less. Plentiful irrigation, however, is relied upon to counteract that fatal pest of the vine, the phylloxera. Some advocate the theory of irrigation in the winter or rainy season only. All the water possible is to be conducted upon the land at the time it naturally falls, leaving the soil to act as its own reservoir, and store up a portion for the dry season ahead. Others even deny the need of ​irrigation altogether. They write to the papers that it is only necessary to keep the surface well scratched with a cultivator, and a supply of moisture will always be found a few inches below it. It is certain that crops both of grapes and the cereals have been produced from unirrigated ground, even for a series of years. But then comes a dry year, in which everything, animals as well as plants, is scorched from off the face of the earth.
"Certainty is what is wanted," says a lively informant.
"You may not need water, as you may not a revolver, all the time; but when you do, you need it awful bad."
VI.
In the plain, just under the mountains, lies the old village and mission church of San Gabriel. The mission dates from 1761. It was founded, like the other missions of California, by friars sent out from the college of San Fernando, in the city of Mexico. I recollect well the original San Fernando. It stands on the street which was the scene of Cortez's disastrous retreat from the city, and is marked with an inscription commemorating the famous Leap of Alvarado. The Mission of San Gabriel is worthy of its picturesque origin. It has the same massiveness, color, and quaint rococo details, including the peculiar battlement, or Spanish horn of dominion. Six old green bronze bells hang in as
A MEXICAN WEDDING AT SAN GABRIEL.
prosperity. The interior of the church contains a few battered old religious paintings, the worst of their kind. It is doubtful if the luxury of really good pictures was ever superadded to the excellent architecture, for which there was a natural instinct. It is a commentary on the popular estimate in which the poor old masters are held, I fear, that I was told by the neighborhood:
"You must see them. They are all Raphaels and Michael Angelos."
The village is piquantly foreign. Its single street is composed entirely of white adobe houses. One of them, with a tumbling, red-tiled roof, is so full of holes that it looks as if it had been shelled. All the signs are in Spanish. Here is the zapatero or shoemaker, and here the panaderia, or bakery. The south walls are hung with a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to prepare the favorite condiment. The population are a humble class, who gain their livelihood for the most part by day-labor on the surrounding estates. They are not too poor, however, to retain their taste for festivity still. On the occasion of some notable wedding among them they will manage to mount on horseback, and, surrounding a bridal carriage, driven postilion-fashion, return from the ceremony, at the old mission, whooping and firing pistols in the air, in the most gallant and hilarious fashion.
Near by is the large estate of Sunny Slope, known as one of the most successful instances of the putting in practice of the sanguine theories about the country. It has been acquired, and developed, from very small beginnings. It consists of some nineteen hundred acres of land, most of it in vines and oranges. There is a large wine and brandy making establishment. Eight thousand ​boxes of oranges and lemons, four hundred thousand gallons of wine and one hundred thousand of brandy, have been produced in a year.
The dwelling-house was approached by a stately avenue of orange-trees, in double lines, three-quarters of a mile in length. The road to the large, substantial buildings of the winery was bordered by an orchard of orange on one side and olive on the other. The vineyards stretched out in distant effect like vast reddish-tawny meadows.
THE VINTAGE, SAN GABRIEL.
At the winery, blacksmithing and cooperage were going on on a large scale, and a deft Chinaman was constructing the orange-boxes. The rich juice of the grape poured in floods, and its more concentrated form as brandy came from its still as clear as water. All distilled spirit is naturally colorless, and the hues it obtains
​for market are given by burned sugar, to gratify an artificial taste.
The hands are Chinamen and Mexicans. The superintendent tells us that the former do the most work and get less pay, but that there are certain things which they cannot do. They cannot plough, nor prune the vines, and they are awkward in the management of animals. Indeed, a Chinaman on horseback, or even in a wagon, seems almost as incongruous as Jack Tar.
We visited, one evening, the Chinese quarters, and it would have been hard to find a more clean, domestic-looking interior among men of any other nationality in the same circumstances of life. They seemed much more orderly in their arrangements than the Mexicans, either those from the village or those who had a settlement on a bold slope of the estate above. There is much native Indian blood among these latter, and their dwellings were half wigwams, patched up of rubbish. Mongrel dogs, a donkey, and a foundered horse wandered at ease among them. A reddish-brown urchin, with large, liquid eyes, coming out, paused to gaze at us.
"Cor-r-re, demonio de muchacho!" (R-r-run, demon of a boy!) cried a slatternly mother, who appeared behind, endeavoring to urge him upon some errand of peculiar expedition.
But the demon of a boy, exemplifying the traits of his race, had no idea whatever of being in a hurry. On the contrary, having removed to a safe distance, he dawdled in the most exasperating way, and continued to stare round-eyed during all of our critical tour of inspection.
The work of the year was now the pruning of the vines. Stripped of every superfluity, the rugged little stocks, regimented veterans, were to stand bare till the exuberance of a new spring should again break forth in
IRRIGATING AN ORANGE-ORCHARD
they turn to the sun; the ground has a gentle, agreeable fall; and splintered granite mountains, with deep cañons among them for exploration, softened by a veil of atmosphere, back up the whole.
The orange-tree, even at a great age, is not as large as one may have expected. Even those of a hundred years in the mission garden are not above two feet in diameter. It is gratifying to be at full liberty to examine this attractive vegetation, known heretofore only in its tub in the conservatory, or on the staircase at a ball. There seems but one drawback to an orange-grove, and that is that it cannot have greensward below to lie upon. It is very exacting—requires all the nourishment the soil can give, and the soil must be kept loose and open around the roots. It is irrigated about once a month, and the surface gone over with a cultivator afterward, to prevent baking up in the sun.
The orange-grove is lovely at all times, mysterious when the long alleys are dark against the red sunset, the fruit glimmering like a feast of lanterns at twilight; and in the pleasant mornings sparkling among the glossy leaves like little suns newly risen; while we catch the perfume of blossoms heralding in a new crop, though the last still hangs upon the bough. Here and there is an example of the enormous shaddock, which resembles the orange in appearance but the lemon in character. The ​lemon is less hardy to rear than the orange, and is not cultivated on as large a scale. Chinamen, with ladders and baskets, gather the fruit, and chatter to one another from the trees like magpies. It is irrigation-day, and all at once the water is let on. Twisting and turning this way and that, it runs out upon the thirsty soil, as if with an eager curiosity in the embrace. Chinamen with hoes follow it, here throwing up little dams, which it tries to evade; there, when it runs sluggishly, opening little channels, and leading it where it should go. The whole orchard is soon babbling musically with running water, and in process of being thoroughly soaked.