378 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



Notes of Travel 



FROM A. I. ROOT. 



Feb. 1. — We are now at San Jacinto, near the 

 foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. Although 

 the peak is only ll,r>00 feet high, it is to me the 

 most wonderful and imposing of any mountain 

 I have yet seen in California. Of course, it is 

 snow-capped at this season, and the greater 

 part of the season its summit is more or less ob- 

 scured by clouds and snowstorms. There is 

 somehow a wonderful fascination about it to 

 me, and I turn again and again and gaze at the 

 rocky citadel, reaching away up among, and 

 often over and above, the clouds. When the 

 weather is clear we can see the summit of " Old 

 Baldy " also, although said summit is toward a 

 hundred miles away. Its top is so clean and 

 white that Mrs. Root insisted it must be some 

 fleecy cloud illumined by the sun; but clouds 

 move and vanish away, while the white tops of 

 the "eternal hills" are fixed for ever. At the 

 base of the San Jacinto range of mountains 

 there are innumerable hot and warm springs 

 that are a never-ending wonder to me. You 

 may remember my theory of accounting for the 

 heat, on the ground that it is caused by the 

 mixing of waters highly charged with chemical 

 salts. Well, here they have a great hot spring 

 that would almost run a mill, and yet the water 

 is pure and soft, and does not seem to contain 

 any chemical at all. In fact, they send it up 

 into an elevated tank by means of a hydraulic 

 ram. so that it may cool off and be fit for drink- 

 ing and domestic purposes. Now, although the 

 temperature of some of these springs runs up as 

 high as 160°. no attempt has yet been made to 

 utilize this vast quantity of heat for greenhouses, 

 outdoor gardens, incubators, or even for warm- 

 ing buildings, so far as I can find out. The 

 people at the bath-houses buy wood and fuss 

 with stoves, while at the very same time they 

 are sending this hot water in iron pipes right 

 past their doors, to cool it off! Why in the 

 world they don't run it through a coil of pipes 

 placed in the rooms, or even through a single 

 pipe running around the room, is more than I 

 see. Of course, it is often tuo warm in the mid- 

 dle of the day, even occftsiondlly in winter; but 

 how much expense would it be to close a valve 

 and let the water flow outdoors as it does now? 

 Oh I I wish I had nothing else to do, so I could 

 come out here and start a queen-rearing plant, 

 using the hot water to warm up the "lamp- 

 nursery," the nuclei, and perhaps a few strong 

 colonies of bees, so as to get lots of drones to fly 

 during these occasional warm days. While I 

 raise the queens, Mrs. Root is going to raise 

 chickens, and have a verii .smaZf egg-farm. 



East of the town. aDout two miles ana a half, 

 isla sanitarium where the hot water comes out 

 of the sides of the mountain, up perhaps 200 ft., 

 and in these hot-water canyons are sunflowers 

 higher than your head, in full bloom; and, 

 mind, this valley is a cold location, where frost 

 is common, and snow comes occasionally. The 

 green vegetation, all along the hot water, clear 

 down into the valley, clearly attests the value 

 of the hot water for pushing vegetation ahead 

 of the season. What a little paradise this might 

 be for the strawberry-grower I At both places 

 we saw arrangements for washing clothes right 

 in the open air. and in one an aged Indian wo- 

 man was away off' up the mountain, alone, do- 

 ing uj) quite a large washing in the Indian 

 fashion. There is no sort of question in regard 

 to the curative properties of the hot water of 

 these various mineral springs. I was at first 

 inclined to ascribe it to the dailyibathing; but 

 instances that came to.my knowledge inciden- 



tally furnish, an amount of evidence too great 

 to be set aside. One of our bee-men was almost 

 at death's door with rheumatism, and the wa- 

 ter of the springs gave him almost immediate 

 relief; and after only five weeks' treatment he 

 climbed the steep rocky mountain with us, with 

 comparative ease. San Jacinto and vicinity 

 seems to be a favored locality for people afifiict- 

 ed with asthma and kindred diseases. We met 

 again and again with people who really can not 

 live in the Eastern States, who are compara- 

 tively well while they stay here. Some of 

 them, after being cured, have tried going back 

 to their old homes and relations; but the mala- 

 dy soon comes back. It seems that certain lo- 

 calities favor certain symptoms or constitu- 

 tions; and the problem, therefore, seems to be 

 to find the place where you get most relief. The 

 result is. that we find many intelligent and cul- 

 tivated people away back in the rocky wilder- 

 ness, keeping bees or raising fruit, simply be- 

 cause they can not live anywhere else, and they 

 feel as if they must have something to do. I 

 would most earnestly advise those who can not 

 enjoy fair health where they are, to give differ- 

 ent portions of California a trial. Don^tlnvest 

 until you are tolerably sure you have found the 

 place you want; but. rather, try the air and 

 surroundings for a few weeks, a month or two, 

 or a year; and if by that time your affliction 

 seems to be giving way. then make arrange- 

 ments for a permanent home. At San Jacinto 

 the air is nearly always dry, and at certain 

 points there is hardly such a thing as a fog 

 known. These localities are especially favora- 

 ble for drying fruit out in the sun. and fruit is 

 often shipped to quite a distance, where it may 

 dry secure from fog. Such locations seem to 

 favor asthmatic people. 



Here is one of the great grain-producing val- 

 leys of the world; but it isn't done at all as we 

 do it in the East. And this brings to mind the 

 fact how little our agricultural papers of the 

 East are fitted for farming here. Again, the 

 farming of one portion of CdUfoiiiid is so utter- 

 ly unlike that of the other, that the instruction 

 and papers for one would not do for another at 

 all. More of this anon. Here in the valley of 

 the San Jacinto they sow their grain at any 

 time from October to February, rarely later 

 than Feb. 1. It is mostly put in at one opera- 

 tion, with a machine that is in itself a plow, 

 seed-sower, and harrow combined. Mr. H. I. 

 Morse, to whom both myself and Mrs. Root feel 

 greatly indebted, told me the following: 



He rented Ki acres of gi-ound for -SlG.tK). With 

 the help of his son and eight horses they sowed 

 it to grain in one day. They never went on the 

 ground any more until after the harvesting was 

 done; then tiiey picked up the sacks of grain 

 and hauled them to the depot, where they re- 

 ceived the cash for the crop. After taking out 

 all expenses they received -?iiO for the one day's 

 wo7-k I have mentioned. Now. please don't im- 

 agine that every man and boy in the San Jacin- 

 to Valley gets scto for every day's work they do. 

 The harvester mentioned is shown on next page. 



The machine cuts the grain, thrashes it, 

 cleans it, and puts it in bags, all for 10 cents per 

 bushel, and it wastes less of the grain by shell- 

 ing out than any of the common ways of cutting 

 and thrashing. Of course, such a machine is 

 possible only where it never rains in summer. 

 The gang that run the machine furnish every 

 thing but sacks and fuel. A "cook-wagon" is 

 a part of the apparatus, so that the farmer has 

 no great lot of men to board and lodge. Well, 

 in San Jacinto they do not irrigate for grain 

 at all. The rain that falls during the winter 

 months starts the grain to growing and makes 

 the crop. I made a good deal of inquiry, but 

 they seemed to think it wouldn't pay to irrigate 



