The Newtown bee., 1893-04-21

Its Glories and Attractiveness New River
 side County.
 It is Tuesday, the 4th day of April, and l sit in my shirt sleeves at 3.30 D m, while through the open door comes the perfume of orange blossoms. R. H. Smith and family will soon have been in Riverside six months and THE BEES in increasing family may be interested in an old friends impressions of this sunset shore.
 If ever this coast was in it's glory, it is now. Not only are the orange groves dccked with scented bloom and unpicked fruit, but the roses are now in magnif- cent dress; pinks, cailas and nearly all cultivated flowers have contributed to lavish Easter adornment; the deciduous trees (those that shed their leaves in winter, like the apricot, peach, plum, pear, etc., are in blossom and the plains are splashed with pink, yellow and blue, the myriad towering of
 NATURES LUXURIANT PROPULSION.
 The country is green to the eye, so abundant have been the spring, rains and once out on the unfenced mesa, the fat test bids ever saw carol along the way, or the jack rabbit runs to its lair with it's swift hop, skip and jump gait. There is no intimation in such picture of the dry, dusty outlook that will come over the landscape when summers fer vor, unrelieved for months by even shower, shall have withered every green thing that is not reinforced by irrigat- ion. But, for the present, natures smiles are nowhere more winsome and the pros poets for harvest are unusually good.
 There are two methods of farming here, by irrigation and dry-land farming, the latter being dependent on the spring rains for a crop. Last year these rains were so scant that the grain crop, most ly barley and wheat, was
 ALMOST A TOTAL FAILURE.
 A Christmas frost also cut down the Riverside orange and lemon crop in the winter of 1S91-92, the blow to Southern California was heavy one. But, with indomitable perseverance and wonderful grit, everybody has held on for brighter prospects, which are hailed with corres- bonding joy.
 l should say right here that in this land of grandiloquent terms and imagi- native exaggeration, there are no farm CTS. The man who plants trees and rais- es fruit is horticulturst, if you please, and the dry-land man who raises grain and few of the hardier trees, like the pepper, eucalyptus, etc.. which EVEN A CALIFORNIA SUN
 cannot wither, is a rancher
 was in the San Jacinto valley, last week, where they number their aggre- gate wheat and barley fields by the lOO,- ooo acres, and came across one rancher l with 4500 acres in wheat and 16O acres in alfalfa, that wonderful clover which cuts six and seven crops a year under the most favorable conditions. He plowed his wheat land with seven six-gang blows, each six-gang blow drawn by 10 horses. The crop will be harvested by two ma chimes, each drawn by 30 horses and both
 together harvesting 50 acres day. JUST THINK
 I of 50 acres of wheat harvested each day.
 and even It that rate, requiring 90 days
 to compass the crop. These harvesters
 have sweep of 24 feet, and head, ,thresh
 and sack the grain as they go. I heard I of some other ranchers, ,on whom the dry season of 1892 fell so heavily that their l land had to be sold to raise money for l taxes, ,and many others met their necessi-
 ties by straining their credit.
 But the danger of rainless skies is l overcome by a sufficient irrigation. These l systems draw their water supply from
 some artesian district near the foot of the l sNOW-CAPPED MOUNTAINS. where the underground veins of water
 boil to the surface when pierced from some living stream bursting from the mountains base, or from the under- l ground flow of the rivers. For very many of these California streams never reach the sailed sea, but sink through the porous sands to the bowels of the earth. while their surface moisture, some times collecting in shallow lakes, is evap- orated, leaving only the glorious sands to mark the location of springs more ABUNDANT WATER SUPPLY. The genuine California enthusiast will calmly inform you that irrigation is bet ter than rain; mans intervention better than his Creators natural provision. Ir- rigation is certainly great relief to a desert country The water can be ap- piled when needed t can he withheld