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Page 36
Liliaceous women and girls are rare among the Mormons. They have seen
too much hard, repressive toil to admit of the development of lily
beauty either in form or color. In general they are thickset, with
large feet and hands, and with sun-browned faces, often curiously
freckled like the petals of Fritillaria atropurpurea. They are fruit
rather than flower--good brown bread. But down in the San Pitch
Valley at Gunnison, I discovered a genuine lily, happily named Lily
Young. She is a granddaughter of Brigham Young, slender and graceful,
with lily-white cheeks tinted with clear rose, She was brought up in
the old Salt Lake Zion House, but by some strange chance has been
transplanted to this wilderness, where she blooms alone, the "Lily of
San Pitch." Pitch is an old Indian, who, I suppose, pitched into the
settlers and thus acquired fame enough to give name to the valley.
Here I feel uneasy about the name of this lily, for the compositors
have a perverse trick of making me say all kinds of absurd things
wholly unwarranted by plain copy, and I fear that the "Lily of San
Pitch" will appear in print as the widow of Sam Patch. But, however
this may be, among my memories of this strange land, that Oquirrh
mountain, with its golden lilies, will ever rise in clear relief, and
associated with them will always be the Mormon lily of San Pitch.
X
The San Gabriel Valley[12]
The sun valley of San Gabriel is one of the brightest spots to be
found in all our bright land, and most of its brightness is wildness--
wild south sunshine in a basin rimmed about with mountains and hills.
Cultivation is not wholly wanting, for here are the choices of all the
Los Angeles orange groves, but its glorious abundance of ripe sun and
soil is only beginning to be coined into fruit. The drowsy bits of
cultivation accomplished by the old missionaries and the more recent
efforts of restless Americans are scarce as yet visible, and when
comprehended in general views form nothing more than mere freckles on
the smooth brown bosom of the Valley.
I entered the sunny south half a month ago, coming down along the cool
sea, and landing at Santa Monica. An hour's ride over stretches of
bare, brown plain, and through cornfields and orange groves, brought
me to the handsome, conceited little town of Los Angeles, where one
finds Spanish adobes and Yankee shingles meeting and overlapping in
very curious antagonism. I believe there are some fifteen thousand
people here, and some of their buildings are rather fine, but the
gardens and the sky interested me more. A palm is seen here and there
poising its royal crown in the rich light, and the banana, with its
magnificent ribbon leaves, producing a marked tropical effect--not
semi-tropical, as they are so fond of saying here, while speaking of
their fruits. Nothing I have noticed strikes me as semi, save the
brusque little bits of civilization with which the wilderness is
checkered. These are semi-barbarous or less; everything else in the
region has a most exuberant pronounced wholeness. The city held me
but a short time, for the San Gabriel Mountains were in sight,
advertising themselves grandly along the northern sky, and I was eager
to make my way into their midst.
At Pasadena I had the rare good fortune to meet my old friend Doctor
Congar, with whom I had studied chemistry and mathematics fifteen
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 innumerable climates,
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 triumphant enthusiasm, "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.
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