July 7, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



263 



Pomegranates and Oleanders in California Villages. 



NOVELISTS, when arranging their scenery, are apt to 

 describe all villages as embowered in roses. As a 

 matter of fact, hardly two villages in this state are simi- 

 lar in the character of their gardens, because soil, climate, 

 situation and many curious accidents determine the kind 

 of beginnings these gardens make and the lines of their 

 development. Some of our mountain towns are noted for 

 their Asters, others for their Dahlias, their Campanulas, 

 their Balsams or their Carnations. One old mining camp 

 grew to be a maze of white Lamarque Roses long before 

 it was deserted. A little river-crossing in Shasta, where 

 three or four log cabins clustered together, was once as fine 

 a Geranium garden as America could then show. But I have 

 been particularly interested in the use that is sometimes 

 made of easily grown shrubs, cuttings of which are passed 

 from neighbor to neighbor until the whole district has one 

 characteristic garden plant. Among such are the Pome- 

 granate and the Oleander. 



There is a little town of the Sierra foot-hills named lone, 

 in lone Valley, Amador County. Mountain streams and 

 irrigation ditches cross it, and great groves of Oaks give 

 dignity to the landscape. The pioneers planted many Apple, 

 Pear and Cherry trees in irregular groups near the streams, 

 so that one sometimes sees very large specimens of these 

 fruit-trees, unpruned and neglected, but still bearing crops. 

 The newer orchards and vineyards are much more profit- 

 able, though not half so attractive. The heart of the valley 

 is almost a swamp. Giant Willow-trees, expanses of Marsh 

 Grasses and Cat-tails, with impassable thickets of wild 

 Blackberry vines, form a strange contrast to adjacent hills 

 of white or red clay thickly clad with various species of 

 Rhus, Ceanothus and Manzanita, with here and there a 

 solitary Pine, the sentinel of some peak. The comparative 

 isolation of the valley seems to have developed neighbor- 

 liness and touched all Ione's gardens with an air of fellow- 

 ship. Years ago, as one plainly reads the story, some one 

 must have brought a scarlet-flowered Pomegranate from 

 Sacramento and planted it. Cuttings were freely distrib- 

 uted, so that now, as I rode through the town in early 

 June, I could not but admire the predominant Pomegranate 

 color. Almost every garden has this royal shrub, standing 

 in many cases twelve or fourteen feet high, and loaded 

 with flowers, and fine specimens guard gateways or make 

 the centrepiece of many a sheltered, sunny lawn, under the 

 bluest of blue skies. 



There are other foot-hill villages of California noted for 

 especial flowers, the charm of which will long linger in 

 one's memory. "There's them flowers you call Oleanders 

 all over Douglas Bar," said an old pioneer woman to me 

 up in Trinity County. " When me an' my ole man druv 

 out here from Missouri I carried one in a tin can and 

 watered it every day. Then, when we settled down in 

 this camp, I rooted slips in bottles for everybody that 

 wanted them. We didn't hev eny other kind of flowers 

 except the wild ones till we got a schoolhouse. Then the 

 teacher brought some Marigolds over the range. Next we 

 hed a white Rose thet grew from a slip thet the stage- 

 driver brung from Shasta. We thought it was awful 

 pretty. 'Bout the time the war began we got some 

 Morning-glory seed, and now, ef ye find one of these 

 Oleander-bushes eneywhere in a canon all by itself, look 

 'round, and close by there'll be the wreck of an ole cabin, 

 a chimbly, or mebbe a gravestun, to mark some forty- 

 niner's home. Some of them very bushes that I rooted in 

 bottles is growing thirty miles away in the brush, with 

 nobody left 'cept me to say anything about it." 



Douglas Bar was a mining village beside the Trinity 

 River, in the midst of Pine forests, and though it had many 

 quaint and sweetly old-fashioned flowers in its sloping and 

 terraced little gardens by the time I first saw it, the one 

 preeminent floral fact was that Oleanders grew there in 

 riotous profusion, as single tall specimens, as hedges, in 

 clumps and masses of royal color to which everything 



else was subordinated. No one in Douglas had ever had 

 the moral courage to own a garden without an Oleander. 

 But this simple, oft-repeated element gave the visitor a 

 pleasure hardly to be put into words ; it glorified the land 

 all summer long even more than those scarlet Pomegranates 

 glorify the valley of lone. 



Niles, Calif. 



Charles H. Shinn. 



The Agricultural Prospects of Alaska. 



THE recent action of the Department of Agriculture, in 

 sending a commission to Alaska to examine into, and 

 report upon, the agricultural prospects of our northern 

 province, may possibly have the effect of causing some 

 people to infer that farm products can be grown success- 

 fully there, and for the information of such I give my 

 experience while a resident there. Having lived for five 

 seasons in Alaska, I would say that in my judgment the 

 territory is wholly unsuitable, and in the nature of things 

 must always remain unsuitable, for agriculture in the 

 proper sense of that term. This unfitness is neither due to 

 cold nor to the northern latitude, as most people suppose ; 

 on the contrary, the climate is very mild between the coast 

 range and the ocean — the temperature at Sitka not being 

 very materially lower than that of Portland, Oregon — while 

 the long summer day of northern latitudes compensates 

 for the shortness of the season. The two causes that mili- 

 tate against agriculture in the territory are paucity of soil 

 and humidity of climate. 



The lack of soil is remarkable. The surface of the 

 country is generally a mass of moss-covered rocks, from 

 the seashore to the mountain sides, the only exceptions 

 to this rule being the sphagnum marshes, which are too 

 wet to produce cultivated crops ; the alpine meadows, 

 which are too elevated for this purpose, and the few deltas 

 and alluvial strips which have been deposited about the 

 mouths of the larger streams. The latter and a few humus- 

 covered spots on the shores of some of the bays and inlets 

 are the only places available for agriculture in the whole 

 territory. Where these patches have a south-western expo- 

 sure and are properly drained, or the slope is sufficient for 

 them to drain naturally, the long summer day of the region 

 is so favorable that garden vegetables can be raised to 

 some extent, but the raising of hay or grain is out of the 

 question ; it could not be harvested owing to the humid 

 climate, even if it could be grown successfully. 



As many persons may be desirous of knowing just what 

 can be grown successfully, I herewith give, in alphabetical 

 order, my experience with various grains, grasses and 

 vegetables : 



Barley does not ripen. Beans (Snap) do well. Beets 

 give good results if the soil is drained. Cabbage can be 

 raised, but it will not head. Carrots can be grown fairly 

 well. Cauliflower does well in a dry season, but the heads 

 are small. Clover I did not succeed with, possibly because 

 the spot on which I tried it was unsuitable. Corn does not 

 ripen at all, and only produces an abortive grain. Fruits 

 (native) nearly all yield an abundant crop ; the native 

 Strawberry only does well on sandy spots, either alluvial 

 or glacial ; Salmon-berry, Rubus spectabilis. grows luxu- 

 riantly ; Cloud-berry, R. Chamsemorus, is generally plen- 

 tiful on the sphagnous marshes, but is occasionally caught 

 by frost and proves a failure ; the five native Huckleberries, 

 Vaccinium parvifolium, V. ovalifolium, V. arbuscula, V. sp. 

 and V. sp., are excellent and of fine flavor and always 

 yield a large crop; the Cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, 

 is scanty; the high bush Cranberry, Viburnum pauciflo- 

 rum, is abundant and good; the Currants, Ribes acerifo- 

 lium and R. bracteosum, yield a large crop, but are not <>t 

 good flavor; the Service-berry, Amelanchier alnifolia, is 

 scarce, but good, and the native Crab-Apple. Pyrus rivu- 

 laris, is only good in favorable seasons. 



Of the introduced fruits the Currant and Gooseberry are 

 the only ones I found worth trying, but it is quite possible 

 that some of the early varieties of Apples would do well if 



