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Page 37
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 income adequate to the maintenance of his family.
Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to
form a reliable inducement 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.
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