IN CALIFORNIA 233 



as seemingly lifeless as the burnt vineyards of the 

 Philistines must have been after the fire-bearing 

 foxes of Samson had overrun them. But come 

 along in summer or early autumn and you see the 

 same vineyard one wide, green lake of billowy vines 

 bowing to the ground we don't usually trellis them 

 here and the grapes, black and purple, white and 

 red and amber, glowing and gleaming amid the 

 leaves; and when you put one in your mouth a 

 Black Hamburg or Flaming Tokay or Muscat of 

 Alexandria or Mission it takes you, or it does me 

 at least, right back to the youth of the world; for 

 you are eating the fruit of the same stock that Noah 

 set out when he began to be an husbandman and 

 planted a vineyard there by Ararat. 



" Of course, I don't mean that Noah planted these 

 specific varieties," explained the Professor, drop- 

 ping to earth again; "but they are developments 

 from that ancient stock. The father of modern 

 grape culture in California was a Frenchman, Jean 

 Louis Vignes, who turned up in Los Angeles about 

 1830, liked the place, settled, lived and died there. 

 He enjoys the doubtful immortality that comes to a 

 man from having a street named for him poor 

 stuff, for not one person in ten thousand who walks 

 along Vignes Street to-day knows why it has such a 

 queer name. Vignes saw there was a future in Cali- 



