nting. They became
discouraged and moved away, abandoning their orchards and houses. The
orchards which we had seen full of fruit were of a later planting.

We asked why it was that the great spaces of Antelope Valley which
stretched below the hills and off to the mountains beyond had not been
taken by settlers. Our young ranchman explained that the valley which
looked to be about eight miles across was really thirty miles wide, and
that it was too far from water for people to settle there. I looked over
the immense stretches of the valley and at the masses of tall, spiky
tree-yuccas, and wished that some way might be found to irrigate those
thousands of acres. If some modern Moses could strike water from a rock,
which would flow through Antelope Valley, our young settler would
someday look down upon hundreds of houses and white tents instead of
upon lonely forests of yucca.

We drove on from Neenach to the top of the grade, some 4230 feet. Huge
round-shouldered hills, bare and lonely, rose on each side of us. Coming
to the Lebec ranch house, we asked shelter for the night. These ranch
houses are very hospitable and are willing to take the place of a hotel
so far as they are able. We found the head of the house in some
confusion and anxiety. His cook had left that morning and the settlement
school ma'am had offered to help with the cooking in the emergency. One
of the ranchmen volunteered to make the bed in our sleeping room,
although he confessed that he had never made a bed in all his life
before. We ate our supper with the ranchmen, sitting at an
oil-cloth-covered table. We had hunks of cold meat, noodle soup with
very thick, hearty noodles, stewed dried peaches, sliced onions, stewed
tomatoes, and good bread and coffee. After a talk before a blazing open
fire with two young electric engineers who, like ourselves, had sought
shelter for the night, we had a dreamless night's slumber.

In the morning we had a most interesting breakfast with a long table
full of hungry ranchmen. Next us sat a big fellow who was in a rather
pessimistic mood. He spoke sadly of California and its resources and
very warmly of Virginia. "That's the place to live!" he said. "You can
drive for a hundred miles here and not see a ranch house or a
schoolhouse or a church worth looking at. In Virginia it's just like, as
a fellow says, 'every drink you take, things look different.' You drive
up on a knoll, and you see before you a lovely farm wit