Local Color 287 



the pickers move on. Some go to the vicinity 

 of the walnut groves, some to the picking of the 

 pampas crop at the Rancho El Toro, while some, 

 who have cut short their picking, are wending 

 their way down the valleys to the fiesta of San 

 Luis Key, down at Pala, where an American and 

 ingenious gambler arranges a transfer of capi- 

 tal, and SeQor Gonzales is " dead broke " again. 

 But is there not the orange and lemon picking 

 a few weeks off? There is always something 

 just ahead in this lotus land of manana, and 

 Seiior Gonzales, his friends, and the rest are 

 never quite unhappy. 



While the vintage is very much the same in 

 all California, it is different. Everywhere there 

 is a romance, a something about it that separates 

 it from the olive, the orange, or lemon picking. 

 The wealth of grapes the splendid Tokays, the 

 huge Missions, the purple of the Rose of Peru, 

 the delicate green of the Muscat, and the abso- 

 lute plethora of the supply is overwhelming to 

 the eastern observer in this western garden be- 

 tween the desert and the deep sea. 



In the north the white grapes are seen at their 

 best; tell it not in Gath, though he has a mar- 

 vellous sense who can tell the difference between 

 the bouquet of the wine of the north and south. 

 Of all the vineyards the most romantic is out 

 at sea, on the island of Santa Cruz, twenty miles 

 from Santa Barbara. Here is an island twenty 



