PROSPECTS. 195 



The fruit will have to be thinned, gathered, graded, 

 packed, and loaded up for market. In fact, if you 

 grow fruit that is worth growing, you must prepare 

 yourself to lead the strenuous life; and if you can 

 combine with that the postulates of the simple life, 

 so mich the better. The greater will be your satis- 

 faction, the more enviable your lot. In any case, 

 you will lead a delightful open-air life; rain and sun, 

 sweet airs, earth's wholesome scents, the mysteries of 

 all growing things — these will be your constant and 

 ever-eloquent companions. Surely there are in such 

 a life, if in any that earth affords, the elements of the 

 truest happiness. The delight of the artist who 

 creates a thing of beauty — such is one reward of the 

 faithful tiller of the soil. Healthful vigour in the 

 bodily frame, sunny cheer in heart and mind — these 

 are other guerdons of his lot. 



Still, although fruit-growing in British Columbia 

 may be described as an ideal life, the material con- 

 ditions which surround it are not yet all that could be 

 desired. It is not all warm sunshine and fair breezes 

 — not yet. Smooth progress is hampered to some 

 extent by impediments, though fortunately they are- 

 impediments which time and growing experience will 

 in all probability remove. One of the most notice- 

 able of these hindrances is the high cost of hired 

 labour. This is, no doubt, felt the more from the 

 fact that few, if any, orchards have as yet reached 

 the stage of greatest profitableness. Most orchard- 

 growers are as yet working under the load of maxi- 

 mum expenses and imperfect, incomplete returns. 

 But year by year the balance will tend nearer and 

 nearer towards a satisfactory equilibrium. 



