s part of California.
The climate is too exhilarating, and if the head of each chicken does
not get a drop of oil at once it dies of brain disease.

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?" T