452 SECOND ANNUAL CITRUS EXHIBITION 



3'ou on all these points, and to them is to be left the more practical 

 and serious questions of the hour. 



But on behalf of the people of this county, and more especially the 

 people of Riverside, I extend a cordial welcome to our visitors, and 

 take this moment to say that about them lie fruits plucked from the 

 very topmost branch of the tree of success. To preempt a breadth 

 of desert and transform it into a garden where the rose vies with the 

 lime and the orange in making the air billow with fragrance, has 

 been no picnic. To drive from his favorite lair or drown in his 

 furthest haunts the wily gopher and the burrowing squirrel — to boost 

 from the very land of his origin the venomous tarantula and the 

 hydra-legged centipede and build an Odd Fellows' Hall on the spot 

 where they were wont to sting people, has been no play spell. To 

 tap yon rushing river and turn its waters across the miles and miles 

 of arid plain has cost money, weariness, and blisters on the hands of 

 toil too numerous to mention without a catalogue. To build flumes 

 across yawning chasms or over dark ravines — to worry the dreary 

 plain until not only two, but possibly three, blades of grass grew where 

 none grew before — to wrench from the very ashes of desolation 

 bountiful harvests and gleaming stretches of fruited trees has been 

 no paper victor}^, but has been wrested with the sabers of toil from 

 myriad enemies. The enemy of drouth which has burned the fields 

 and the vines and the leaves of the tender trees, the enemy of detrac- 

 tion which is ever ready to blow a cold breath in the face of merit, 

 and the enemy of hard times whose gaunt hosts have hung upon the 

 land like a pestilence — that have trampled on the richest harvests 

 and whose shadow is hardly yet beyond the horizon. 



To the success won from such tierce odds we welcome you. We 

 welcome you to a climate which, when not otherwise engaged curing 

 raisins, can cure consumption and other pulmonary complaints in 

 the same breath ; a climate which forces the bronchitis to hide its 

 diminished head, and where the asthma has no more show than an 

 ounce of phosphorus in the largest match factory on the Pacific 

 Coast ; where the eternal hills through all the balmy year filter 

 through the air the pungent odor of the sighing pines, where the 

 days are garlanded with the melody of songsters that seek no fairer 

 clime because there is none fairer ! 



We welcome you most especially to this exhibit, because it shows 

 in pictures of gold — pictures of substance that you may hold in your 

 hands or put to your lips with pleasure and benefit to your anatomy, 

 or, if you cannot get your hands on that, will make your mouths 

 v.^ater anyway — pictures that tell most unmistakably what brawn and 

 brain may accomplish, even 'mid the dreariest prospect. It seems 

 hardly credible that less than ten years ago all about us stretched a 

 land — 



"Brown as the blasted Dead Sea fruit, 

 As bound to barrenness and dearth; 

 Behold yon patch of rusty earth 

 Whereon no turf has taken root, 

 iSTo summer shadows flit and pass." 



That so few years could change such barrenness into the prolific 

 beauty that we see this moment : 



" Here where the orange blooms along the way, 



Making a bridal of the fruited year ; 

 Here where rose- blossoms drift from May to May, 



And spend their od'rous richness far and near; 



