26 



ANNUAL REPORT 1919 AND 1920 



stone walls of a patio, but nowhere did I see anything which looked like a grove. 

 Back of the town the cerro de San Miguel rose in all its cactus-dotted barrenness. 

 *Is it possible,' I asked myself, 'that there can exist, in such a region as this, the 

 gardens of which we have heard?' 



"But I was told to wait; and after crossing the town and approaching the 

 foot of San Miguel, I began to catch ghmpses of clumps of trees, and walled 

 gardens, and little streams of water running here and there. And then we climbed 

 the hill, and the whole glorious scene was spread out before me; the town in 

 front, with a clump of green foliage marking the site of the plaza, and to the rear, 

 extending around the base of the hill from one side of the town to the other, the 

 groves and gardens — solar es, they are called — ^where abundant water makes pos- 

 sible the cultivation of fruits and flowers which otherwise could not grow in this 

 dry region. 



"Here they were, the gardens of Atlixco! Here at last were the avocados — 

 I could easily distinguish them from the other foliage. Somewhere among all 

 those trees below me, I thought to myself, must be the parent Fuerte, and the parent 

 Puebla, and many other trees I had come so far to see!" 



It is probable that any other California horticulturist possessing a deep in- 

 terest in avocados would have been subject to much the same impressions upon ar- 

 riving in Atlixco as those which I experienced on the day I wrote the above para- 

 graphs. I am certain that he would have been surprised to find a region so strik- 

 ingly suggestive of his own State, and I am equally certain that he would have 

 been thrilled as he viev/ed the avocado trees from the summit of San Miguel. 



So far as I am aware, the attention of Californians was first publicly called 

 to the avocados of Atlixco by William D. Stephens, in an article which he wrote 

 for the California Cultivator in 1911. Mr. Stephens was formerly a mining man. 

 He became familiar with the avocado in 1900, while in La Paz, Lower Cali- 

 fornia. Later he was in the Mexican State of Oaxaca, and there saw avocados 

 growing at elevations of 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea. The similarity be- 

 tween the climatic conditions of Oaxaca and southern California suggested to him 

 the possibility of grov^ng avocados in the latter State. He returned to California 

 and found that a few trees were already fruiting at Monrovia, Santa Ana, Holly- 

 wood and elsewhere, and he decided to start an avocado nursery. He formed a 

 partnership with D. E. Clower of Monrovia, and imported several thousand avo- 

 cado seeds from Mexico. In the early summer of 1 9 1 he returned to the latter 

 country to search for the best varieties to cultivate in California. The story of 

 his explorations in the Atlixco region I quote from an account which Mr. Steph- 

 ens has kindly furnished me: 



"Through friends in Mexico City I learned that Queretaro was undoubtedly 

 the Mecca I was seeking. To Queretaro I hastened, and there I remained about 

 two weeks examining the fruits and shipping home seeds and budwood. I was 

 not, however, entirely satisfied with the fruits I found there. I returned to 

 Mexico City and went through Orizaba and Cordoba to the Isthmus of Tehuante- 

 pec and the State of Chiapas. I found avocados of ordinary quahty everywhere 

 but not the superior ones I was seeking. 



"I went back to Mexico City and fell m with Dr. Martin Espinoza, a 

 dentist who had lived in San Francisco. He told me of the Atlixco district 

 and its magnificent avocados. They were thick-skinned, he said, and ripened in 

 winter and spring instead of summer. In two days I was in Atlixco. 



"My Spanish was poor, so I made an effort to find someone who knew 

 English and who could serve as interpreter for me. The second day after my ar- 



