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[Letter dated "September 1,
1877." Editor.]
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 choicest 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 me 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 may 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 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.
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 preeminently 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 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 hard 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.
The summer climate of the fir
and pine woods of the Sierra Nevada would, I think, be found infinitely more
reviving; but because these woods have not been advertised like patent
medicines, few seem to think of the spicy, vivifying influences that pervade
their fountain freshness and beauty. |
