Sydney Smith said of the fertility of Australia, “Tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.” But in California even the hoe is not needed, for “volunteer crops” come up all by themselves, and look better than ours so carefully cultivated. They say that if a Chinaman eats a watermelon under a tree the result is a fine crop of melons next year. And I read of a volunteer tomato plant ploughed down twice that measured twelve feet square, and bore thousands of small red tomatoes.
Alfalfa is an ever-growing crop—can be garnered five times each year.
And as for flowers, I really cannot attempt to enumerate or describe in detail. There are hundreds of varieties of roses. They were found growing wild by myriads, and have been most carefully cultivated and improved. One rose tree in the grounds of the Arlington Hotel has spread over sixty feet of the veranda, and three lady guests have climbed into its branches at once. As one man said: “The roses here would climb to the moon if a trellis could be provided.”
A friend sent me twenty-five large bunches of the choicest roses from her garden one morning in April, each bunch a different variety. Their roses are shipped in large quantities to San Francisco, and Chicago has her churches decorated at Easter from the rose gardens of Santa Barbara.
Honey naturally is thought of. Apiculture here is a great business. The bee has to be busy all day long and all through the year—no rest. One ingenious fellow proposed crossing the working bee with the firefly, so it could work all night long by its own lantern. But this is better. I hear wondrous stories of bees getting into cracks of church towers or upper stories, and bulging out the buildings with their accumulated stores—positively cartloads of sweetness. Think of honey made from orange flowers selling at five cents a pound!
A clergyman writing of Santa Barbara County says that twenty-five years ago all their vegetables were imported. Now beans yield a ton to the acre, potatoes two hundred and fifty bushels per acre, and he has seen potatoes that weighed six, seven, and eight and a half pounds—as much as an ordinary baby; beets, seventy-five tons to the acre; carrots, thirty. Mr. Webster once declared in Congress that this State could never raise a bushel of grain. Corn yields fifty bushels to the acre; barley, sixty; wheat, thirty. Others give much higher records: corn, one hundred and thirty bushels; barley, eighty; potatoes, four hundred; forty tons of squashes, four tons of hay, sixty tons of beets.
I have spoken of stock-raising. Dairying is a profitable industry. Poultry farming a little uncertain. If interested in mining there is much to explore. Just in this county are found gold, silver, copper, asphaltum, bituminous rock, gypsum, quicksilver, natural gas, and petroleum.
And what sort of a climate does one find? Santa Barbara is an all-year-round resort. It has all that one could ask.
“The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea.”
It is a perpetual summer—sometimes a cold and rainy June, sometimes a little too warm, sometimes a three days’ sand-storm, disagreeable and trying; but it is always June, as we in New England know June. At least it is Juney from 9 A.M. until 4 P.M. Just before sunset the temperature falls. Then when the sun goes rapidly in or down it is like being out at sea. And to a sensitive patient, with nerves all on outside, chilled by the least coolness, it is unpleasantly piercing.
When any one describes Santa Barbara to you as a town
“Where winds are hushed nor dare to breathe aloud, Where skies seem never to have borne a cloud,”
remember that this applies truthfully to “a Santa Barbara day,” but
The temperature during the day varies little. I see that one resident compares it with May in other parts of the country. I think he has never tried to find a picnic day in early May in New England. He says: “Our coldest month is warmer than April at Philadelphia, and our warmest one much cooler than June at same place.” They did have one simoon in 1859, when the mercury rose to 133°, and stayed there for eight hours. Animals and birds died, trees were blasted and burned, and gardens ruined. But that was most “unusual.”
Flannels are worn the year round. Average of rain, seventeen inches. There are sixty-one mineral and medicinal springs in California that are already famous. Here we can take hot sulphur baths, and drink the nauseous water that is said to cure almost all diseases.
Farming is comparatively easy. But grapevines are smitten by a mysterious disease called “cellular degeneration,” and phylloxera; a black scale that injures orange and olive, and a white scale that is worse. Apples are not free from worms; the gopher is sure to go for every root it can find. There was a serpent even in the original Eden. The historian remarks: “The cloddish, shiftless farmer is perhaps safer in Massachusetts.” I think of experiences at “Gooseville,” and decide not to buy, nor even rent a ranch, nor accept one if offered. “Fly to ills I know not of?” No, thank you!
I’m tired now of agriculture and climate, and will turn to less practical themes. You sympathize. We will stop and begin a new chapter, with a hope of being more interesting.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN GALA DRESS.
“The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing, fast and bright; Both isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent light.”
To see Santa Barbara at its best you must go there for the Floral Carnival. Then at high noon, on a mid-April day, all State Street is brilliantly decorated with leaves of the date-palm, pampa plumes, moss combined with tropical foliage, calla-lilies, wildflowers, bamboo, immortelles, branches of pepper trees, evergreens, lemon boughs laden with yellow fruit, and variegated shrubs. Draperies of white and gold, with green or red in contrast, or blue and white, in harmony with red flowers, or floral arches draped with fish-nets bestrewn with pink roses; or yellow alone in draperies combined with the poppy, or gray moss and roses. No one fails to respond to the color summons for the day of days. The meat-markets are tastefully concealed with a leafy screen and callas. The undertaker makes his place as cheerful as possible with evergreens, roses, and red geraniums. The drugstore is gaily trimmed, and above the door see the great golden mortar made of marigolds. The Mexican and Californian colors are often flung out, and flags are flying from many windows. The long broad street is a blaze of glory; the immense audience, seated on tiers of benches, wait patiently, then impatiently, for the expected procession; and as many more people are standing in line, equally eager. Many have baskets or armfuls of flowers, with which to pelt the passing acquaintance. There are moments of such intense interest that everything is indelibly and eternally photographed. I see, as I write, the absolutely cloudless sky of perfect blue, the sea a darker shade, equally perfect, the white paved street, the kaleidoscope of color, the fluttering pennants, the faces of the crowd all turned in one direction, and hark! the band is really coming, the beginning of the pageant is just seen, and now sea, sky, flags, crowds are no more regarded, for the long-talked-of parade is here. See advancing the Grand Commander and his showy aids, gay Spanish cavaliers, the horses stepping proudly, realizing the importance of the occasion, the saddles and bridles wound with ribbons or covered with flowers. And next the Goddess of Flowers, in canopy-covered shell, a pretty
