232 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



into the city of New York, and the art galleries of the East would be bereft 

 of their prestige and glory. 



Flowers in profusion bedeck these mountains and hills, and are nature's 

 perennial adornments of these winterless valleys. With an experience of 

 a little more than a quarter of a century, this soil raises better wheat than 

 is raised in its native home in Egypt where they have had an experience 

 in wheat raising for fifty centuries. With an* experience of half of a score 

 of years are raised here, I am told, oranges equal in quality to those raised 

 on the orange trees seven hundred years old at Santa Sabina in Italy, or 

 to those raised in their native home along the Ganges north of Calcutta. 



In this section the soil is peculiarly productive of all the necessaries 

 and luxuries of life. Up the hills along the Rhine the women carry ferti- 

 lizers upon their backs to enrich the soil; along the banks of the Feather 

 River, long years ago, bounteous Nature herself enriched the soil, and in 

 its pristine richness some of this soil is offered, in comparison with its real 

 worth, almost as free as air to him who is willing either to hold the plow 

 or drive. 



Along the Rhine are farms stone-terraced, so that every foot of the soil 

 may be made productive and none go to waste; here are great stretches of 

 unfilled acres, which now await only the coming of the home-seeker. 



It would seem that for once at least merit must win, for it was only 

 forty-three years ago since the first settlement was made in this county; 

 now it has a population of twenty-five thousand people, and is increasing 

 at the rate of one thousand a year. As scarcely elsewhere on the conti- 

 nent the charming goddesses, Flora, Ceres, and Pomona, hold sway, and 

 will continue to be the presiding genii of these regions for centuries to 

 come. Within the realm of such genii who would not seek a home in the 

 gem of the orange belt? 



The bright skies of Italy, like the whitened walls of an ancient palace, 

 have become dimmed with the soot of ages; southern France and Spain 

 have become blighted by the mildew of bigotry and superstition; our 

 " sunny South" has been despoiled by war, pestilence, famine, and other 

 ravages of death; but this western slope, from its evergreen pines on the 

 mountains, to its ever green citrus groves in the valleys, exists now in all 

 its freshness and purity, as on the morning when John C. Fremont first 

 saw the sun peering over the Sierra's summit into these valleys, then await- 

 ing the coming of civilization. 



Standing as we do here in a summer's tent, in what are known elsewhere 

 as " bleak December days," and in the presence of such semi-tropical 

 scenes as these, it takes no logician to explain why "westward the course 

 of empire takes its way." Caesar crossed the Rubicon for conquest; Wil- 

 liam of Normandy the English Channel, to extend the glory of his em- 

 pire; Peter, the Hermit, led the Crusade across the Bosphorus against 

 Jerusalem, that he might rescue that Holy City from the wicked Saracen. 

 The argonaut of '49 in his " prairie schooner," crossed the American desert, 

 to gather from the famed El Dorado fields golden nuggets to bring back to 

 his family. 



The "Eastern tourist" of 1887 crosses over the same old emigrant trail, 

 but in a palatial car, bringing his family with him, to fulfill life's noblest 

 mission, to build a home; an ideal home under splendid skies and in a 

 land where his sunset days may be golden. The highest inspiration which 

 actuates mankind (I mean a love of the home) gives the impulse to the 

 present immigration westward. Now not only all America, but nearly all 

 Europe, forgetful of France, Spain, and Florida, recognizes that in the cli- 

 mate of California is the place for ideal homes. 



