Local Color 283 



women, and children carrying the sixty-pound 

 capacity boxes that are filled many times to 

 make the ton that may be the day's work of 

 even a girl. The splendid vineyard extends in 

 every direction. To the north are the Sierra 

 Madre; to the west the lower hills of Santiago 

 and Puente, and to the east the valley of San 

 Gabriel, Pomona, Chino, and beyond, the peaks 

 of San Antonio, San Jacinto, and San Gorgonio, 

 ten or eleven thousand feet in air, sentinels of 

 this garden of Hesperides, from which one may 

 look upon the greatest desert of the world, and 

 upon a terrestrial paradise of orange, olive, and 

 grape. 



The vineyard from the mountains has a mathe- 

 matical precision, and is planted in rows; owing 

 to its vast dimensions the plants are not trel- 

 lised, but are kept as bushes and do not grow 

 higher than two or three feet. Masses of bril- 

 liant green all through the warm summer, they 

 cover the lower mountain slopes in every direc- 

 tion, and hidden beneath their broad leaves is 

 the most gracious offering of all the Cali- 

 fornias. It seems impossible that enough men 

 and women could be found from Sonoma to 

 Pasadena all along the Sierra Nevada and Sierra 

 Madre to pick this enormous vintage that brings 

 to the State nearly twice as much wine as 

 is produced in all France, or seven hundred 

 and fifty thousand tons of grapes valued at 



