232 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[October r, 1883. 



Prospects for 1883. 



The manager estuuates the probable oiit-turii of tea during 

 1883 as follows :— 



Acres for five years and over. Tea lb. 



Heelckah 388 136,000 



Mazcngah 200 G6,0n0 



Kar.soolie 80 16,000 



668 218,000 



I 'p to 3Iay 7 the out-turn of tea, as compared with corres- 

 ponding period last year, had been as follows: — 



1882. 1883. 



Heelekah Ib5.634 lb 1,721 



Jlrizongah 1,318 604 



Karsoolie 326 265 



lb. 7,308 lb. 2,590 



The falling-oft' in out-turn is general throughout the tea 

 districts — the season being a very lute one — and is entirely 

 owing to want of raiu. Under date May 8, however, the 

 acting manager writes as follows: — "1 enclose tea stateraente 

 for first week of I\lay, tVom wliich you will notice that ws 

 are still behind, owing entirely to want of rain ; but during 

 the last four days we have bad the much-looked-for down- 

 pour, and when I start plucking again I hope to pick up 

 quickly." Trom subsequent accounts it is satisfactory to 

 know that the out-turn of the week ending May 14 was 

 nearly thi'ee times in excess of the preceding week, from which 

 it would appear that the rain was having the desired effect. 



FRESH FIELD.S AND PASTURES NEW: 

 CALIFORNIA. 



(By a Ciyloii Planter. ) 



To see and judge California aright Required a great 

 deal more time than we had at our disposal ; still 

 the information we picked up during our short stay 

 may be of some value to the readers of the Observer, 

 and it is with this hope we send it on. It was early 

 iu the morning of the 19th April that we got into 

 the harbour of San Francisco. When it was daylight 

 ■we got up to have a look at the place, and found 

 muddy water, a chill wind, a choppy sea, and an 

 ugly town. The sky too was overcast, and an old 

 boy — customhouse official — sitting on the companion, in 

 answer to our enquiry if this were the far-famed 

 Californian climate, " snioiled a smoil" and guessed 

 it was. "Then we'll turn in," we said, and did. After 

 breakfast and before we got alongside of the wharf — 

 the tide would not let us earlier — the rain came down 

 in thick sheets, customhouse officer giving no comfort. 

 '■Had been such a dry spring, that he guessed it might 

 rain two or three days on end ;" for whicli speech he 

 was then and there mentally voted to be a drivelling 

 idiot. All the same, we looked out disconsolate 

 enough on the muddy waters, the threatening sky 

 the drijjping sheds, the .sloppy streets, and came to 

 the conclusion that the bad weather wdiich had been 

 with us all across the Pacific was still to be our 

 heritage. It was a bad introduction to California ; 

 but there was some comfort in the thouglit that things 

 could not be worse, 



We need not stay to speak of the city of San Fran- 

 cisco : it was the orchards, the vineyards and orange 

 groves of .'Southern California we had come to see, 

 and to reach there we travelled by the Southern 

 Pacific Railroad instead of the Union Pacific, which is 

 the more direct route to New York. 



The first place to be visited was Fresno — a ten hours' 

 run or so from 'Frisco,' in the neighbourhood of'ndiich 

 are located some of those colonic , -which claim to 

 be so suited for people of limited means. In one of 

 tliose a man may take up Iiis twenty, forty, sixty, 



or more acres, work it with his own hands, and while 

 building up for himself a home in this new country 

 not want altogetlier the advantages of near neighbours 

 and the pleasures of society. The isolation which 

 usually obtains in the new settlement is to a great 

 extent absent here. 



You hear of all classes who have gone in for colony 

 settlement : mechanics working at their trades in the 

 city or elsewhere, and getting their block brought 

 into bearing with their savings; clerks at the desk with 

 a friend in the colony looking after their interests while 

 toiling on in the meantime, getting i-eports sent, pay- 

 ing occasional visii.i, and eventually throwing up their 

 commercial calling and turning fruit growers ; families 

 scattered abroad able to re-unite and contmue close 

 neighbours under the orchard system of Southern Cali- 

 fornia. 



Cultivation in California has literally made "the desert 

 rejoice aud blossom as the rose," aud this has bfen 

 done by water. Without water miles upoTi miles of 

 what are now fruitful fields would have remained 

 as barren as the sea-short. In more than one place we 

 saw the line of demarcation betw-een the cultivated 

 and uncultivated portions strikingly manifest as we 

 crossed tbe boundary of the well-kept orclKirds mto 

 what was a veritable howling waste. So necessary is 

 water iu m.auy parts of California, that one of the 

 chief things the seller has to see to is to buy water 

 rather than land. Certainly much faith must have 

 been needed by tbose who thought of irrigating that 

 sandy soil, ^so hopeless does it appi-ar to the un- 

 initiated. To give an idea how much this is so, we 

 travelled .south with a New Zealand farmer and his 

 wife and child. He was from the rich Canterbury 

 Ijlidns, and intended to stay anight here, and a day 

 there, as they went on their way across to New York. 

 But, so disgusted was he with the barren outlook, 

 and the seemmgly saiuly waste throujjh which the train 

 was running, that he changed his mind at the last 

 moment, and despite the fact that he was without 

 dmuer or sleeping car be refused to get out at Fresno, 

 willing rather to face the discomforts of a night journey 

 unprepared as be was, and went on direct to Los 

 Angelos. 



Certainly there was not much visible to encourage 

 a visit from our agriculturist : aud besides the weather 

 was abommable. A cold wind was howling over the 

 pU'U, raising clouds of sand, and chilling you to the 

 bone. We certainly did think it a black lookout, and 

 for the time bi'ii a considered that the accounts we 

 bad read of the tine climate of the land droppmg with 

 fatness, of its carpet of flowers, and of its surpassing 

 beauty, Were Yankee swindles. Of Fiesno itself 

 we claimed to have more or less acquaintance. 

 In the pages of Harper's Mac/azitie we had seen an 

 illustration of its townhall, a builditig of some pre- 

 tensions in print, an ugly pile iu reality, from which 

 the phister was scaling oil'; but as we walked across 

 the few liundred yards from the railway stiition to 

 the iiotel, iiiikle-ecep all the time in the sliifting sand, 

 it did occur to us that a good road would h'lvebeen, 

 in our eyes at least, a nnu'e substantial monument 

 of prot;ress. However, we were there, and we made 

 up our minds to postpone our verdict till we had 

 seen what another d.iy would bring forth. 



We got into c aiversatiou after dinner with an Amer- 

 ican from the Eastern .States, who was settled in Fresno, 

 and he told us that when he came first ho disliked 

 California so much that he returned to his old 

 home, to find he had made a mistake, aud 

 came away back again. He had then a high 

 opinion of the state ; toUl us of men arriving with 

 only five hundred dollar-s, knocking along "anyhow"' 

 for some years, .and bye-aud-bye getting to have a 

 place of their own. He himself knew several clerks 

 lu 'Fnseo, ami families also, who Ind gone iu for 



