the door of the dining-room many heard him mutter, “She’s a queer dick; don’t amount to much, anyway; thought so when I first saw her; impudent, too!”
As the farmer remarked when he first encountered a sportsman dude, “What things a feller does meet when he hasn’t got his gun!”
But the train is slowing up, and see, Judge Brown, my old friend of The Anchorage, is looking for us. No! No “Glenwood”; no “Arlington”; no “kerridge”!
CHAPTER IX.
RIVERSIDE.
“Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees bloom, Where the golden orange grows in the deep thickets’ gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heavens blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?”
Yes, that describes Riverside, and reads like a prophecy. If Pasadena is a big garden with pretty homes scattered all through its shade and flowers, then Riverside is an immense orange grove, having one city-like street, with substantial business blocks and excellent stores, two banks, one in the Evans block, especially fine in all its architecture and arrangements, and the rest is devoted by the land-owners to raising oranges and making them pay. You will see flowers enough to overwhelm a Broadway florist, every sort of cereal, every fruit that grows, in prime condition for the table ten months out of the twelve. Three hundred sunny days are claimed here out of the three hundred and sixty-five. They are once in a while bothered by a frost, but that is “unusual.” Before 1870 this was a dusty desert of decomposed granite. What has caused the change? Scientific irrigation and plenty of it. Or, as Grant Allen puts it, “mud.” He says: “Mud is the most valuable material in the world. It is by mud we live; without it we should die. Mud is filling up the lakes. Mud created Egypt, and mud created Lombardy.”
Yes, one can get rich here by turning dust into mud. It is said to be the richest town “per capita” in all California of the same size, $1100 being the average allowance for each person. This is solemnly vouched for by reliable citizens. And they have no destitute poor—a remarkable record. The city and district are said to enjoy an annual income of $1,500,000 from the fruit alone, and there is a million of unused money in the two banks.
Irrigation is better than rain, for the orange growers can turn on a shower or a stream whenever and wherever needed. It requires courage and faith to go straight into a desert with frowning mountains, big, little, and middle- sized, all about, and not an available drop of water, and say, “I’m going to settle right here and turn this desert into a beautiful home, and start a prosperous, wealthy city. All that this rocky, barren plain needs is water and careful cultivation, and I will give it both.” That was Judge Brown’s decision, and the result shows his wisdom. No one agreed with him; it was declared that colonists could not be induced to try it. But he could not relinquish the idea. He was charmed by the dry, balmy air, so different from Los Angeles. He saw the smooth plain was well adapted for irrigation, and Santa Ana could be made to furnish all the water needed. So that it is really to him we owe the pleasure of seeing these orchards, vineyards, avenues, and homes. Where once the coyote and jack-rabbit had full sway, land now sells at prices from $400 to $3000 per acre. There are no fences—at least, there is but one in all Riverside. You see everywhere fine, well-trimmed cypress hedges with trees occasionally cut in fantastic, elaborate designs. There are many century plants about the grounds; they blossom in this climate after twelve years, and die after the tall homely flower has come to maturity. The roadsides have pretty flowers planted all along, giving a gay look, and the very weeds just now are covered with blossoms. Irrigation is carried on most scientifically, the water coming from a creek and the “cienaga,” which I will explain later. There are several handsome avenues shaded with peppers, and hedges twenty feet high, through which are obtained peeps at enchanting homes; but the celebrated drive which all tourists are expected to take is that to and fro through Magnolia Avenue, twelve miles long. The name now seems illy chosen, as only a few magnolia trees were originally planted at each corner, and these have mostly died, so that the whole effect is more eucalyptical, palmy, and pepperaneous than it is magnolious. People come here “by chance the usual way,” and buy because they see the chance to make money. You are told pretty big stories of successes; the failures are not alluded to.
I saw a large and prosperous place belonging to a woman of business ability, who came out all alone, took up a government grant, ploughed and planted and irrigated, sent for a sister to help her, sold land at great prices, and is now a wealthy woman. If I had not passed through such depressing and enthusiasm-subduing experiences as an agriculturist in the East I might be tempted here. I did look with interest at the ostrich farms, and had visions of great profits from feathers, eggs, and egg-shells. But it takes a small fortune to get started in that business, as eggs are twenty dollars each, and the birds are sometimes five hundred dollars apiece. And they are subject to rheumatism and a dozen other diseases, and a blow from a kicking bird will kill one. I concluded to let that dream be unrealized. Did you ever hear of the nervous invalid who was told by his physician to buy a Barbary ostrich and imitate him exactly for three months? It was a capital story. The lazy dyspeptic was completely cured. As a hen woman I will remark
Corn does not thrive. Mr. Brown at first put down ten acres to corn. It looked promising, but grew all to stalk. These stalks were over twelve feet high, but corn was of no value, so he sold the stalks for eighty dollars, and started his oranges.
The English are largely interested here, and have invested two or three millions, which will pay large interest to their grandchildren. Their long avenue is loyally named “Victoria.” A thrifty Canadian crazed by the “boom,” the queerest mental epidemic or delusion that ever took hold of sensible people, bought some stony land just under Rubidoux Mountain for $4000. It was possibly worth $100, but in those delirious days many did much worse. It is amazing to see what hard work and water and good taste will do for such a place. He has blasted the rocks, made fountains and cisterns, planted several acres of strawberries, set out hundreds of orange trees, has a beautiful garden, two pretty cottages, and some day he will get back his original price for a building site, for the view is grand.
Riverside, while leading the orange-producing section of Southern California, is not exactly the location which would have been selected by the original settlers had they possessed the experience of the producers of today. The oranges do not have to be washed, as in some other places; they are not injured by smut or scale; the groves are faultless in size of trees, shape, and taste of fruit. One orange presented to me weighed thirty-one ounces. But the growers, having lost $1,000,000 by Jack Frost several years ago, are obliged now to resort to the use of lighted tar-pots on cold nights to make a dense smudge to keep the temperature above the danger line. One man uses petroleum in hundred-gallon casks, one for each acre, from which two pipes run along between the rows of trees, with half a dozen elbows twenty feet apart, over which are flat sheet-iron pans, into which the oil spatters as it vaporizes. An intensely hot flame keeps off the frost. This I do not hear spoken of at Riverside; you must go to a rival for any disagreeable information. At Pasadena their severe winds are called “Riversiders”; at Anaheim they are “Santa Anas”; and friends write me from damp Los Angeles to the dry air of Riverside, “How can you stay in that ‘damp’ place?” The inhabitants of Riverside do not concede that Pasadena is a place for orange growers. At Redlands, luckily above frost terrors, the terrible losses at Riverside from that trouble are profusely narrated. San Diego gets its share of humorous belittlement from all. You hear the story quoted of the shrewd Chinee who went to that city to look for business, where one hears much of future developments, but did not settle, saying, “It has too muchee bym-bye.” Friends, and especially hotel proprietors, exclaim in disgusted astonishment, “What! going to Riverside? Why, there’s nothing there but oranges.”
I find more: fine and charming drives, scenery that differs from that of Pasadena, “that poem of nature set to music beneath the swaying rhythm of the pine forests of the lofty Sierra Madres,” but is equally enjoyable and admirable.
