320 
CALIFORNIA 
touched by the various implements of cultivation. There was 
verdure in the desert. Wheat was no longer brought from Chili 
for bread. The wheat-fields of California began to wave in the 
morning and evening breeze. 
The discovery of the agricultural capabilities of California was 
greater than the discovery of gold. Men ceased to talk about a 
worthless country. The land was vital with the elements of 
hidden fertility. There came a day when six hundred ships 
were not enough to carry the surplus wheat crop of the state to 
foreign lands. The whole country from not producing sufficient 
to feed 100,000 k\ gonauts at home was now producing enough 
to feed more than a million people abroad, and the capacity of 
the state today is sufficient to sustain ten millions. 
Nor has the mineral industry become obsolete. If the testi- 
mony of mining experts is to be taken, there is more gold in the 
placers and quartz mines of the state than all that has ever been 
taken out; but the products of agriculture, of which there was 
once no })romise, have annually for more than ten years past 
exceeded in value one hundred million dollars, although they 
have as yet reached only the first stage of development, while 
the annual production of gold and silver amounts to less than 
twenty million dollars. 
But these are not all the marvelous industrial changes that 
have been wrought. The Mission Fathers adopted a primitive 
system of agriculture. They selected stations near the ocean, ■ 
where the moisture was greatest and where there were living 
streams for artificial irrigation. They cultivated no crops that 
they could not water when the rains had ceased. They brought 
the olive and the vine from Spain and naturalized them in their 
gardens. The orange from Seville also sometimes bloomed and 
fruited there, but there were no blossoming orchards be 3 mnd, 
and no vineyards ripened the grai>e under the long summer sun. 
The native Mexican cared for none of these things ; he was con- 
tent with his jerked beef and his tortillas. Fruit was reserved 
as the luxury of those who cultivated it in eonsecrated gardens. 
It has been recorded that many a pioneer was ready to exchange 
a silver dollar for an ap})le. The orchard and the vineyard be- 
came a necessity. What was good in the old homestead ought 
to be good about the new one. Seeds were sent in letters; cut- 
tings and small fruit trees came as the most precious freight of 
the early steamers by way of the isthmus. Orchards began to 
blossom in the valleys, and the vine made man}’- little patches 
