138 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



snow and ice, there is a country without winter, where the flowers bloom 

 out-doors through the winter months, and where the field worker has the 

 whole year for out-door labor. Such an exceptional climate, in such high 

 latitude, is incomprehensible to the stranger. That the intending settler 

 may be able to comprehend the facts of our climate, we give the causes in 

 brief. 



Every one knows that the Gulf Stream, rising in the Carribean Sea, and 

 flowing north and east to the coast of northern Europe, makes the British 

 Isles, in high latitudes, not only inhabitable, but gives them a more tem- 

 perate climate than that of New England, twelve degrees further south; 

 that it makes France, on the same parallels as ice-bound Labrador, the 

 land of the vine and the ivy. 



So it is here ; there is in the Pacific a warm river which rises under the 

 torrid sun of the Indian Ocean, and sweeping around the earth's great 

 circle, washes the whole western coast. The air currents, always from the 

 ocean, come over valley and hillsides, tempered from this warm ocean 

 river. There is, however, a more potent factor in causing our exceptional 

 climate than this ocean stream. Starting from the western point of the 

 Alaskan Peninsula, fully one thousand five hundred miles west of San 

 Francisco, there is one continuous high mountain barrier, running south- 

 east into Mexico. This barrier deflects all the Arctic blasts to the east, 

 and gives us only the warm winds from the ocean. The protection afforded 

 by this great mountain wall is illustrated on the line of the Central Pacific 

 Railroad. Auburn is on the west or protected side of the barrier, and 

 Truckee, only eighty miles away, is on the eastern or unprotected side. 

 Truckee has heavy falls of snow, and ice forms of considerable thickness. 

 Auburn has a winterless climate; oranges and lemons hang on the trees 

 all through the winter months, and flowers bloom in her gardens in the 

 open air the year around. 



Productions. 



This exceptional climate gives the State a list of productions of a vastly 

 more varied character than is known to any of her sister States or Ter- 

 ritories. Every production of the temperate or semi-tropic zones is found 

 here. The pine and the palm, the maple and the magnolia, the apple 

 and the apricot, the pomegranate and the plum, the orange and the lemon, 

 and the fig and the citron, do as well here as they do anywhere on earth. 

 Every kind of grape that ever ripened under the sun gives an abundant 

 return for the labor of the vineyardist. Cotton, tobacco, and the mulberry 

 tree of Asia and Europe grow luxuriantly here. It was once said of one 

 of the sunny spots of earth that " it is better to be a worm and feed on 

 the mulberry trees of Daphne than to be a king's guest," and it is probably 

 true that the sunny climate of California produces as tender and delicate 

 a repast for the silkworm from our mulberry trees as the groves of Daphne 

 furnished. It is a well established fact that the semi-tropic climate of 

 California grows abundantly those products which are denied by a harsher 

 and less hospitable climate to other portions of the United States. 



There is no doubt that if, as a nation, we are to produce our own wines, 

 it must be done in California. The same may be said of citrus fruits, olives 

 and olive oil, figs, raisins, prunes, and nuts; and we are large importers of 

 many other products which our California soils and climate are eminently 

 adapted to produce. 



As showing the great market there is for our products, the following fig- 

 ures of imports of semi-tropic products are taken from the official reports 

 of the United States Treasury Department for 1886: 



