192 THE RAISIN INDUSTRY. 



the tender grevillea are on one side of the avenue, while on the other 

 side we may find elm, eucalyptus or even the beautiful umbrella. 



Irrigation is practiced on every farm. Fifteen thousand acres are 

 covered by water stock, but not all irrigated yet. Just now the orange 

 groves are irrigated, and I observe their methods. The land is always 

 leveled before anything is planted, as there is too little water here to 

 waste any on unlevel land. One way to irrigate an orchard is to plow 

 furrows in between the rows of trees, and then let the water run in 

 them. Another way is to check the whole orchard with small levees, 

 inclosing thus a little square around every tree, and the square check 

 of one tree meeting the same of the adjoining tree. This is actually 

 flooding the land. Deciduous trees and vines grow without irrigation, 

 but to get a good crop irrigation is necessary. The large, dry and 

 rocky creek beds speak of the water that is wasted in winter time in 

 flowing to the sea. Practically nothing of it is then saved. Irriga- 

 tion districts under the Wright law are formed and forming, and every- 

 body seems hopeful that in course of time there will be water enough 

 to irrigate all the land that is good enough to be irrigated. Some of 

 the finest ranches in the State lie right at the feet of Santa Ana. The 

 San Joaquin ranch contains one hundred thousand acres, I am told, and 

 it is not yet cut up, and thus some of the best land around Santa Ana 

 is yet only used as pasture. The owners failed to sell in the time of the 

 boom and must now wait until the land that is already covered with 

 ditches will be fully settled before they can sell, but the time, we pre- 

 dict, is not very far off. 



SANTA ANA TO SAN DIEGO. 



A railroad trip from Santa Ana to San Diego offers many points 

 of interest. It carries us through both the most highly cultivated 

 and through the absolutely vacant, not to say barren, lands. We- 

 leave the orange grove and walnut plantations of Santa Ana, and are 

 carried almost immediately past the lovely and shaded Tustin, where 

 pepper groves and lime hedges, gardens and splendid villas, combine 

 nature with art, taste and enterprise to create a veritable oasis for those 

 favored ones who can remain there. We rush for a few minutes through 

 these highly cultivated lands, and suddenly find ourselves out on a 

 wide, open plain, comprising about eighty thousand acres, without a 

 house to be seen anywhere, with no orchards, no vineyards, no signs 

 of civilized life. And still the soil is the richest, the native vegetation 

 of grasses the most luxuriant. The soil is apparently subirrigated, 

 and could grow almost anything the farmer might plant there. Along 

 the horizon, stretching from the mountains way down on the plains 

 like an immense phimed serpent in its wavy and coiling track, is seen 

 a continuous band of sycamore trees, outlining the bed of a stream. It 

 is like stepping out of one room into another. What can be the reason 

 of the sudden change? This vast body of land, containing over 

 126,000 acres, is an old Mexican grant, the remnant of one of those 

 Mexican cancers, which to such an extent has retarded the develop- 

 ment of California. Sure enough, we see wire fences everywhere, 



