A Truthful Woman in Southern California

by Kate Sanborn

  I saw a large and prosperous place belonging to a woman of business ability, who came out all alone, took up a government grant, ploughed and planted and irrigated, sent for a sister to help her, sold land at great prices, and is now a wealthy woman. If I had not passed through such depressing and enthusiasm-subduing experiences as an agriculturist in the East I might be tempted here. I did look with interest at the ostrich farms, and had visions of great profits from feathers, eggs, and egg-shells. But it takes a small fortune to get started in that business, as eggs are twenty dollars each, and the birds are sometimes five hundred dollars apiece. And they are subject to rheumatism and a dozen other diseases, and a blow from a kicking bird will kill one. I concluded to let that dream be unrealized. Did you ever hear of the nervous invalid who was told by his physician to buy a Barbary ostrich and imitate him exactly for three months? It was a capital story. The lazy dyspeptic was completely cured. As a hen woman I will remark en passant that it is hard to raise poultry in this part of California. The climate is too exhilarating, and if the head of each chicken does not get a drop of oil at once it dies of brain disease.

  Corn does not thrive. Mr. Brown at first put down ten acres to corn. It looked promising, but grew all to stalk. These stalks were over twelve feet high, but corn was of no value, so he sold the stalks for eighty dollars, and started his oranges.

  The English are largely interested here, and have invested two or three millions, which will pay large interest to their grandchildren. Their long avenue is loyally named “Victoria.” A thrifty Canadian crazed by the “boom,” the queerest mental epidemic or delusion that ever took hold of sensible people, bought some stony land just under Rubidoux Mountain for $4000. It was possibly worth $100, but in those delirious days many did much worse. It is amazing to see what hard work and water and good taste will do for such a place. He has blasted the rocks, made fountains and cisterns, planted several acres of strawberries, set out hundreds of orange trees, has a beautiful garden, two pretty cottages, and some day he will get back his original price for a building site, for the view is grand.

  Riverside, while leading the orange-producing section of Southern California, is not exactly the location which would have been selected by the original settlers had they possessed the experience of the producers of today. The oranges do not have to be washed, as in some other places; they are not injured by smut or scale; the groves are faultless in size of trees, shape, and taste of fruit. One orange presented to me weighed thirty-one ounces. But the growers, having lost $1,000,000 by Jack Frost several years ago, are obliged now to resort to the use of lighted tar-pots on cold nights to make a dense smudge to keep the temperature above the danger line. One man uses petroleum in hundred-gallon casks, one for each acre, from which two pipes run along between the rows of trees, with half a dozen elbows twenty feet apart, over which are flat sheet-iron pans, into which the oil spatters as it vaporizes. An intensely hot flame keeps off the frost. This I do not hear spoken of at Riverside; you must go to a rival for any disagreeable information. At Pasadena their severe winds are called “Riversiders”; at Anaheim they are “Santa Anas”; and friends write me from damp Los Angeles to the dry air of Riverside, “How can you stay in that ‘damp’ place?” The inhabitants of Riverside do not concede that Pasadena is a place for orange growers. At Redlands, luckily above frost terrors, the terrible losses at Riverside from that trouble are profusely narrated. San Diego gets its share of humorous belittlement from all. You hear the story quoted of the shrewd Chinee who went to that city to look for business, where one hears much of future developments, but did not settle, saying, “It has too muchee bym-bye.” Friends, and especially hotel proprietors, exclaim in disgusted astonishment, “What! going to Riverside? Why, there’s nothing there but oranges.”

  I find more: fine and charming drives, scenery that differs from that of Pasadena, “that poem of nature set to music beneath the swaying rhythm of the pine forests of the lofty Sierra Madres,” but is equally enjoyable and admirable.

  Still, above all, and permeating every other interest, is the orange. As to dampness, a physician threatened with consumption, and naturally desirous of finding the driest air, began while at Coronado Beach a simple but sure test for comparative degrees of “humidity” by just hanging a woolen stocking out of his window at night. At that place it was wet all through, quite moist at Los Angeles, very much less so at Pasadena, dry as a bone or red herring or an old-fashioned sermon at Riverside. Stockings will tell! (From April to September is really the best time to visit Coronado.) I experienced a very sudden change from a warm, delightful morning to an afternoon so penetrating by cold that I really suffered during a drive, although encased in the heaviest of Jaeger flannels, a woolen dress, and a heavy wrap. I thought of the rough buffalo coat my uncle, a doctor, used to put on when called out on a winter night in New Hampshire, and wished I was enveloped in something like it, with a heated freestone, for feet and a hot potato for each hand. If I can make my readers understand that these sudden changes make flannels necessary, and that one needs to be as careful here as in Canada as regards catching cold from night air and these unexpected rigors, I shall feel, as the old writers used to say, “that I have not written entirely in vain.”

  In one day you can sit under the trees in a thin dress and be too warm if the sun is at its best, and then be half frozen two hours later if the wind is in earnest and the sun has retired. In the sun, Paradise; in shade, protect yourself!

  CHAPTER X.

  A LESSON ON THE TRAIN.

  “The Schoolmistress Abroad.”

  All through Southern California I hear words of whose meaning I have no idea until they are explained. For instance, a friend wrote from San Diego in February: “Do not longer delay your coming; the mesas are already bright with wildflowers.” A mesa is a plateau, or upland, or high plain. And then there are fifty words in common use retained from the Spanish rule that really need a glossary. As, arroyo, a brook or creek; and arroyo seco, a dry creek or bed of extinct river.

  Alameda, an avenue.

  Alamitos, little cotton-wood.

  Alamo, the cotton-wood; in Spain, the poplar.

  Alma, soul.

  That is all I have learned in A’s. Then for B’s.

  I asked at Riverside what name they had for a big, big rock that rose right out of the plain, and was told it was a “butte.” That gave a meaning to Butte City, and was another lesson.

  Banos means baths, and barranca is a small ravine.

  Then, if we go on alphabetically, cajon, pronounced cahone, is a box.

  Calaveras, skull.

  Campo, plain.

  Ciénaga, a marshy place.

  Campo sancto, cemetery.

  Canyon or cañon, gulch.

  Cruz, cross.

  Colorado, red.

  Some of the Spanish words are so musical it is a pleasure to repeat them aloud; as:

  Ensenada, bright.

  Escondido, hidden.

  Fresno means ash.

  I inquired the meaning of “Los Gatos,” and was kindly informed it was “The Gates,” but it really is “The Cats.”

  Goleta, the name of another town, means schooner.

  The Spanish j nearly always has the sound of h.

  Jacinto, Hyacinth.

  José, Joseph.

  Lago is lake; pond, laguna; and for a little lake the pretty name lagunita. “Lagunita Rancho” is the name of an immense fruit ranch in Vacaville—and, by the way, vaca is cow.

  Madre is mother; nevada, snowy.

  San Luis Obispo is San Luis the Bishop.

  El Paso is The Pass.

  Pueblo, a town.

  Pinola is parched corn ground fine between stones, eaten with milk.

  Pinoche, chopped English walnuts cooked in brown sugar—a nice candy.

  Rancho, a farm; and rio, river.

  Everything is a ranch out here; the word in the minds of many stands for home. A little four-year-old boy was overheard pray
ing the other day that when he died the Lord would take him to His ranch.

  Sacramento is the sacrament.

  Sierra, saw-toothed; an earthquake is a temblor.

  San and Santa, the masculine and feminine form of saint.

  As the men who laid out a part of New York evidently travelled with a classical dictionary, and named the towns from that, as Rome, Syracuse, Palmyra, Utica, so the devout Spanish explorer named the places where he halted by the name of the saint whose name was on the church calendar for that day. And we have San Diego (St. James), San Juan (St. John), San Luis, San José, San Pedro, Santa Inez, Santa Maria, Santa Clara, and, best of all, Santa Barbara, to which town we are now going.

  The Mexican dialect furnishes words which are now permanently incorporated in our common speech; as:

  Adobe, sun-dried brick.

  Cañon, gorge.

  Tules, rush or water-weed. (Bret Harte’s Apostle of the Tules.)

  Bonanza, originally fair weather at sea, now good fortune in mining.

  Fandango, dance of the people.

  Corral, a place to collect stock. (A farmer of the West never says cow-pen, or barnyard, or farmyard, but corral.)

  Cascarones, egg-shells filled with finely cut gold or silver paper, or perfumes, broken on head of young man, in friendly banter or challenge to a dance.

  Burro, small kind of donkey.

  Broncho, wild, untamed animal.

  Sombrero, hat.

  Rebozo, scarf.

  Serape, blanket.

  Lariat, rawhide rope.

  Hacienda, estate.

  While we are rattling along there is so little to see until we reach the ocean, that we may as well be recalling a few more facts worth knowing. At Riverside I learned that the leaf of the orange tree was larger when it first came out than later. It grows smaller as it matures. And most people say that the fig tree has no blossom, the fruit coming right out of the branch. But there is a blossom, and you have to cut the fruit open to find it. Just split a young fig in two and notice the perfect blossom in the centre.

  They say it takes two Eastern men to believe a Californian, but it only takes one Eastern woman to tell true stories which do seem almost too big for belief. One man got lost in a mustard field, and he was on horseback too.

  I saw at San Diego a tomato vine only eight months old, which was nineteen feet high and twenty-five feet wide, and loaded full of fruit in January. A man picking the tomatoes on a stepladder added to the effect. And a Gold of Ophir rose-bush at Pasadena which had 200,000 blossoms. This is vouched for by its owner, a retired missionary, who cannot be doubted. There are truly true pumpkins that weigh 256 pounds and are seven feet in circumference; cucumbers seven feet long; seven beets weighed 500 pounds; three bites to a strawberry; and the eucalyptus shoots often grow twenty feet the first year, carrying with them in their rapid ascension the stakes to which they were tied. All this is true. But here are two stories which may be doubtful, just to show what anecdotes are current in California. “A man was on top of a California pumpkin chopping off a piece with an axe, when it dropped in. He pulled up his ladder and put it down on the inside to look for it. While groping about he met a man, who exclaimed, ‘Hello! What are you doing here?’ ‘Looking for my axe.’ ‘Gosh! you might as well give that up. I lost my horse and cart in here three days ago, and haven’t found ‘em yet!’”

  “A farmer raised one thousand bushels of popcorn and stored it in a barn. The barn caught fire, and the corn began to pop and filled a ten-acre field. An old mare in a neighboring pasture had defective eyesight, saw the corn, thought it was snow, and lay down and froze to death.”

  As to serious farming, and how it pays in this part of the State, I have clipped several paragraphs from the papers, and will give three as samples of the whole. I desire also to communicate the cheerful news that there are no potato bugs to make life seem too hard to bear.

  “RAISED ON TWENTY ACRES.

  “How much land do I need in California? is a question often asked. The answer is readily made: as much as you can profitably and economically work. A gentleman has made the following exhibit in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce: ‘Raised on twenty acres of ground, 2500 boxes of oranges, 1500 boxes of lemons, 37,000 pounds of grapes, 2000 pounds of pears, 35,000 pounds of apples, 15,000 pounds of berries, black and red, 1000 pounds of English walnuts. Besides nectarines, apricots, plums, three crops of potatoes, 500 pounds of crab-apples, and one acre of alfalfa kept for cows, and flowers of different varieties. These oranges are worth on the trees $3500, the lemons $3000, the grapes $370, pears $30, apples $75, berries $30, walnuts $80. The total will be $7085, and all the products not counted. That surely is more than the crops of a half section in Kansas or Illinois will sell for.’ Every one may not do as well, but they can approach it, and if they do, twenty acres is quite enough.”

  “PROFITS OF BERRY CULTURE.

  “Speaking of the profits of growing strawberries in Southern California, the Covina Argus gives some interesting facts and figures. That paper says: ‘One of the growers stated to us that last year he picked and shipped from three acres the enormous amount of fourteen tons. These berries brought as high as fifteen cents and as low as four cents per pound, but netted an average of about eight cents per pound, or $2240. That would make an acre of berries produce a cash return of $746.66⅔, which, considering the shortness of the berry season, from four to five months, is a pretty good income on the money invested.’”

  “PROFIT IN ALMONDS.

  “M. Treat, an authority on almond culture, has contributed the following to the Woodland Mail: ‘This year from 190 California paper-shell almond trees (five years old), covering two and five-sevenths acres, I gathered 3502 pounds of nuts, which sold in Chicago at twenty-two cents a pound. This is $316.82 to the acre—a little over $4 to the tree—18½ pounds to the tree. When these same trees were four years old they averaged about three pounds, and in eight years they will double what they bore at five. They will at eight years bear full 40 pounds to the tree. At twelve years they will bear fully 100 pounds to the tree without the least exertion. This is at seventy trees to the acre, and reckoning at twenty-two cents to the pound, $1540 per acre. Now these are nothing but plain, bare, raw facts.

  “‘Almond trees live and do well for fifty years, and in some places in Europe when fifteen years old bear from 150 to 200 pounds per tree.’”

  At Saugus Junction Mr. Tolfree has established one of his famous restaurants, where I can conscientiously urge you to get out and dine. Every course is delicious.

  Ventura County is partially devoted to the culture of Beans. I use a capital because Beans represent Culture, or are associated with it in one State at least, and the very meaning of the word is property, money, from the French biens—goods. I wonder how many of my Boston friends knew that! I did not until a friend showed it to me in Brewer’s phrase-book, where I also learned that beans played an important part in the politics of the Greeks, being used in voting by ballot. I always had a liking for beans, but I have a profound respect for them since viewing the largest Lima Bean Ranch in the world, belonging to my friend Mr. D. W. Thompson, of Santa Barbara. There are 2500 acres of rich land, level as a house floor, bounded by a line of trees on one side and the ocean on the other; 1600 acres are planted to beans, and the profits are nearly $60,000 yearly. Thirty-six tons of beans were used this year in planting. This could not be done in the East, but beans do not need to be “poled” here, as, influenced by the dreamy atmosphere, they show no desire to climb, but just lie lazily along the ground. Still, there is a deal of work connected with the business. Dairying, building, horseshoeing, repairing of machinery, are all done on the place. “As soon as the spring rains are over, eleven gang ploughs, four ploughs to a gang, each gang drawn by six horses, plough about seven acres per day.” Then the harrowing and planting in the same big way. During the entire summer these vines grow without a drop of water, freshened daily by the heavy sea fogs. Harvesting
and threshing all done by machinery. The steam thresher would amaze some of our overworked, land-poor farmers. About one hundred and twenty carloads of beans are annually shipped from this ranch, reserving the tons needed for seed.