34 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



January, 1908 



eucalyptus trees, and then the vineyard, loaded with white, 

 red and purple grapes. There is a charm about this island 

 home, with its peculiar environments, difficult to explain; 

 completely isolated, hardly suspected by passing ships, and 

 only visited by passing yachts, it is a haven of rest and beauty. 

 There is a peculiar fascination in the life on the great 

 Southern California vineyards, and they are a Mecca for 

 thousands of visitors during the sea- 

 son. As the summer wanes the 

 vineyard takes on an appearance of 

 renewed activity, with the arrival 

 of the bands of pickers, generally 

 Mexicans, who camp out on some 

 corner of the land. In the morn- 

 ing the Chinese boss brings out a 

 great number of boxes holding so 

 many pounds, and each picker be- 

 gins filling his as rapidly as possible. 

 Every once in a while a team comes 

 around to collect them, and the 

 counter, on a big white horse, ac- 

 companies it to take the count. The 

 sight is an interesting one, with the 

 men in picturesque sombreros, the 

 women in fancy colored shawls, and 

 the babies lying by the roadside, 

 laughing at the tall eucalyptus 

 plumes that wave and nod in the 



seeds almost form small mountains, of quite some bulk. 

 The rolling country reaching back to the Sierras, about 

 the vineyards at Pomona, is beautiful in the extreme. In 

 Southern California the vineyards lie mostly in the San 

 Gabriel and other large valleys, and from there we have the 

 finest views of one of the strangest contrasts in America. 

 The valleys are robed in all the vestments of summer's rich 



The Vintage at Pasadena, California 

 -Mexican Grape Pickers at the Brigden Vineyard 2 — Grapes Going to the Crusher on Endless Chain 



strong west winds, like thmgs alive, as they truly are. 

 The picking sometimes goes on steadily for several weeks, 

 while the great loads of grapes are being hauled to the 

 winery and led by an endless chain device into the press- 

 room, where the juice is extracted. One can always tell the 

 big winery by the rich odor or perfume of the crushed grapes, 

 and near some of them the piles of rejected stems, skins and 



verdure, the mesa 

 above the vineyard is 

 gorgeous, ablaze with 

 the poppy or cup of 

 gold that has traced 

 a path of fiery color 

 from Santa Barbara 

 to the desert beyond 

 San Jacinto, and back 

 of this, apparently so 

 near that you can 

 almost touch it, rises 

 the wall of the Sierra 

 Madre, 6,000 feet in 

 the blue, with sentinel 

 peaks of San Antonio, 

 San Jacinto, and San 

 Bernardino, five or six 

 thousand feet higher. 

 Their summits are 

 white with winter, 

 and standing in the 

 vineyard I can see the snow blowing up the slope of San 

 Antonio, then whirled aloft into the air like some gigantic 

 wraith, to drift away and be lost in the warm air rising from 

 the summer land below. Winter and eternal spring are face 

 to face in the Southern vineyard. 



Many vineyards produce only raisin grapes, and in cer- 

 tain localities hundreds of acres of these are to be seen. 



