The San Joaquin Valley. 261 



shallow lakes of quicksilver. It does not stick at all. The spokes and felloes 

 and hubs come out absolutely clean. At our hotel we enjoyed an excellent 

 lunch, and were then taken up for our drive through the suburbs and coun- 

 try. It was at Fresno that we struck the grape-producing region in its full 

 glory. One of the finest, but by no means the largest, vineyards in California 

 is that called the Barton, just north of the city. Yonder it is, before you. It 

 is as four-square as Babylon, exactly a mile on each side, and along each side 

 is a shining row of Lombardy poplars. They make an inclosure of just a 

 section of land. It is almost a water-level as to its surface, and one of the 

 darkest and richest soils to be seen anywhere. This land sold, seven years 

 ago, for $20 an acre, but the vineyard was recently purchased by an English 

 syndicate for an even $1,000,000. In the middle of each side of the square 

 is a great gate-way, arched over, with the name Barton on the arch. Two 

 splendid boulevards leading from gate to gate in either direction thus cross 

 each other in the middle of the section. At the crossing, and in one corner 

 thereof, forty acres are appropriated to the buildings and small orchards 

 connected with the vineyard. The remaining six hundred acres are all in 

 grape-vines. Near the northeast corner a canal enters the vineyard, bearing 

 its various channels of water throughout the whole. In this connection it 

 may be said that the distance to which water will percolate the soil from the 

 trench in which it flows depends largely upon the character of the soil. 

 Under favorable conditions the moisture will extend two hundred to four 

 hundred feet without further distribution than the natural percolation of 

 the water. If, however, the soil have any considerable percentage of clay 

 in it, the distribution is by no means so free ; and in such cases the channels 

 have to be multiplied. 



But now as to the vineyard itself. I did not see a solitary trellised 

 grape-vine while I was in California. No frame-work is employed in 

 its support, except a stake when the vine is young. The idea with the 

 vineyardists of these regions is to produce a grape tree, and not a branch- 

 ing vine; they trim and prune accordingly. All the vineyards are of 

 a common type, as it respects the form and general character of the 

 growth. The vine, on its planting, grows rapidly, and is at once cut back 

 to a low stump. The idea is that the tree shall be from two to three feet in 

 height — hardly more. From this, as the low stump increases in size^ vigor- 

 ous vines are thrown out each year to the distance of from six to ten feet. 

 But these vines, in the following January after they have borne their fruit 

 for the season, are cut away, carried out of the vineyard, heaped in piles and 

 burned. Then you see only the rows of low stumps or stools remaining. 

 These are set about nine feet apart ; and the appearance of the vineyard to 

 him who is not familiar with it is sufficiently novel. Such is this Barton 

 vineyard, and such are all the rest. The California grape tree grows in rows. 

 It becomes four inches, six inches, ten inches, in diameter. In such a case 

 it is like the low, tapering stump of a tree. At the Centennial Exposition 

 of 1876 a section was exhibited, sawn from a California grape tree, eighteen 



