The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1900-03-29
A Maipe Woman in California.

Miss Helen NJ. Smith, editor and man
ager of the Bar Harbor Record, has been
spending the winter in California and is
now on her way home. We take the fol
lowing extracts from her last letter to the
Record:
| didn't come to California to sight see,
any way. But let me meet anyone who
is Interested in ranch life, who wants to
know how to work adobe soil, how many
sugar beets will grow to an acre, how the
foothills look with their fields of barley,
their acres of peas ETC., etc, looking like
immense crazy patchwork of planting, and
| can talk freely. | know all about that
side of California know how to irrigate
| know how to sort oranges, to pack
prunes, to drive gang plough, and to
name the wild flowers. | know the best
location Of a vineyard and the modus oper-
andi of making sweet and dry, white and
red wines. Eve seen all that from start to
finish The vineyards just now look droll
enough. The vines are all cut back to
ugly little brown stumps that DOT the
hill side and give no suspicion of the
luscious fruit that will soon begin to
cluster around those apparently dead
stumpS.
I've seen things could not see at home.
But scenery? What needed ! of that?
Haven we scenery all about Frenchman's
bay that we can defy the world To equal?
The drives in California are grandly beau
titul, bu1 the drives of Mount Desert, the
circuit drive about Sorrento, the drive
around Hancock Point. not to speak of the
Schoodic DIVE at Winter Harbor, can hold
their own in comparison. The scenery
here, like everything else in California, is
bigger but there is much more beauty to
the square mile at Mount Desert. | do
not say this TO disparage California, but
just to try and equal their ''brag'
When my attention was called at Los
Angeles 10 d $50. 900 house | wanted to
say: "Why, We have So, 900 stables at
Bar Harbu1;'' but didn't think it would
lie good taste, SO ! refrained The resi-
dences on Orange Grove avenue, Pasadena,
are more like our Bar Harbor summer
homes. Pasadena is certainly beautiful
town. Miss Lewis says Redlands is prettier
! but | only saw that from a distance.
Once upon time, as you may know,
there We're no trees along the coast of Cal
ifornia. All that grow there now have
. been planted since the early tifties (that is
as far back as any Californian reckons.)
! Most Of these are the eucalyptus, won
derful tree for usefulness. 1t grows hun
dreds of feet high and is used as a wind
break. 1t sheds its bark every year; that
makes excellent kindling. 1t can be cut
| for trewood and in an incredibly short
! time has grown to its original height. 1t
keeps green, OF blue green, all through
the winter. II can UNDERESTIMATE said one
eastern man, ''why your orchards grow in
symetrical rows; but | can't for the life
OF me see why your forests do" That is
the grove OF eucalyptus painted for fire
wood The medicinal qualities of this
tree are known to all.
The most depressing thing about Cal
ifoInia is the lack of water. 1t almost
never rains in the south and it rains with
such irlegulaIity in the north that the
beautiful green vcrdure that gives beauty
to the landscape now will in few months
be parched, dry and brown, except in the
! big cities where the water can be brought
from miles and miles away. Each house
has its own water works from artesian
wells, and WlndmlllS on tank house are
part of every establishment. | stood on
a corner of the street at Berkeley and
counted twenty five within almost stones
throw.
| was crossing a ravine some thirty
miles or more from San Francisco and
| asked what another iron bridge beside
the one We were on was for and was told
that the water pipe to San Francisco
crossed there. 1t is pitifui and depress-
ing to see both natural and artificial vege-
tation all through the south just painting
for drop of water. If one has money
| enough to pay the enormous tax he can
irrigate his fruit trees, but barley and
beets cannot be irrigated. AS the source
of supply for this irrigation grows less
the tax grows larger, until all that comes
from the fruit and often more, too, goes
back in irrigation. Don't come to Califor-
MIA with the idea of getting rich off fruit
ranch. It's simply gamble, and like
all gambling, in the long run, if not at
once. you are bound to be loser.
There is regular rush for charters for
National banks, with capital of $25, OOO in
tOwnS of lass than z 0fl0 inh ahitantS an.