Notes and Gleanings. 41 



Fruit in California. — I have seen such sic^hts to-day as can be seen no- 

 where on the continent outside of California. What I remember of the trip 

 through this San Jose valley is — Fruit. One of the San Francisco money kings 

 has a horse barn down here that cost as much as a first-class New England high 

 school house does : it is of the things we are all taken to see. Another has a 

 private residence that is like a prince's palace for size and picturesqueness, and 

 elegance of finishing and furnishing ; hospitable and generous to the stranger as 

 no prince's palace could be, unless he were of American blood and fellowship. 

 There are libraries and private picture galleries : their doors open at the nod of 

 an eastern tourist. There are parks, and hills, and groves, and lawns, and 

 fiower-gardens, and hothouses : every gate swings on its hinges at your faintest 

 desire. There are wide reaches of magnificent live oaks ; summits commanding 

 such treasures for the eye as the Tem.pter might have offered ; wild canons set 

 in enchanting mountain scenery. Of all this wonderful panorama — barns, and 

 houses, and gardens, and meadows, and flowers, and slopes, and valleys, and 

 crests, and forests — one takes a hasty sight. Bits of it I have sketched, but 

 the whole wide picture lies faint and unre:il in my memory. For what 1 saw was 

 — Fruit. 



It is not easy to exaggerate in speaking of Cahfornia fruit. One of the 

 first places I visit in a new city is its market : go into the market and see what is 

 raised, then into the bookstore to see what is read : now you are prepared to say 

 in which one of three or four great classes your new community belongs. San 

 Francisco has one of the finest markets in the Union. I went down there the 

 first Saturday evening after we reached this coast. There was such a show of 

 fruit as no county fair c v city horticultural exhibition in Massachusetts ever made ; 

 and yet I was told, over and over again, " Market isn't very good this evening." 

 Since that night I have been eager to get into the fruit country — eager, and 

 yet dreadfullv afraid that I should find it a disappointment. 



This superb valley is a vast fruit orchard. Not that it is wholly given up to 

 orcharding, for there are many large farms, but that in a drive of twenty miles 

 one can see tliree or four times as much fruit as in any other similar drive. 

 There are acres and acres of pears, and apples, and peaches, and plums, 

 and grapes, and nectarines, and figs, and blackberries, and strawberries. The 

 orchards are cpen to anybody, and I have been driven through miles and miles 

 of avenues bordered with heavily-laden trees. Every man was more than willing 

 to give me all the fruit I could eat and carry away. Acres of ground are almost 

 covered with pears and apples, that must rot or wither, because there is no one 

 to buy them, and the cellars and chambers are already filled. Let me see : in 

 one gentleman's grounds I found English walnuts, sweet and bitter almonds, two 

 varieties of figs, an acre of blackberries, more than an acre of strawberries, half 

 a dozen each of peaches and plums, an abundance of nectarines, ripening bana- 

 nas, limes and oranges, seven or eight varieties of grapes, as many more of 

 pears, and more than I could number of apples. He said he was not doing much 

 in fruit — nor was he ; and yet a hundred bushels was rotting under his trees. 

 There are places out here in Santa Clara from which a train of cars can be 



