IN CALIFORNIA 235 



its day as the Washington Navel is now. He also 

 went in for grapes, and not long after the gold dis- 

 covery he set out a vineyard in the Napa Valley as 

 nearer the crack market of those days than Los 

 Angeles, and began selling his crop in San Francisco 

 at $25 a cental wholesale. He told Major Horace 

 Bell, 'I am now realizing a boyhood dream of a coun- 

 try where money grows on bushes. Selling grapes 

 at two bits a pound is as near picking money from 

 bushes as any business I know of.' " 



As he turns the horse's head homeward, the Pro- 

 fessor flicks with his whip a clump of flat- jointed 

 cactus that sprawls by the roadside. 



"They tell me that's a plant nowadays abundant 

 in Palestine," he chuckles, "but the Bible is silent 

 about it. Maybe you know that cactuses never 

 reached the Old World until after Columbus dis- 

 covered them in America? Ignorance of that fact 

 has fooled many an artist into working prickly-pear 

 plants into Syrian desert pictures along with the 

 Holy Family." 



The frequent presence of the olive in the Cali- 

 fornia landscape, particularly in the south, does 

 much to give to the region its Old World look, and 

 brings constantly to mind the imagery of the Old 

 Testament as one travels amidst the peculiar beauty 

 of these trees of ancientest lineage, emblematic to 



