to see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.

"We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in Japan, the
terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't drive a horse up
it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone wall, and good masonry,
six feet high, a level terrace six feet wide; up and up, walls and
terraces, the same thing all the way, straight into the air, walls upon
walls, terraces upon terraces, until I've seen ten-foot walls built to
make three-foot terraces, and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet
of soil they could grow things on. And that soil, packed up the
mountainsides in baskets on their backs!

"Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in Dalmatia--I
went there, too. They went around and gathered every bit of soil they
could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the shovelful or handful,
and carried it up the mountains on their backs and built farms--BUILT
them, MADE them, on the naked rock. Why, in France, I've seen hill
peasants mining their stream-beds for soil as our fathers mined the
streams of California for gold. Only our gold's gone, and the peasants'
soil remains, turning over and over, doing something, growing something,
all the time. Now, I guess I'll hush."

"My God!" Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. "Our folks never done
that. No wonder they lost out."

"There's the valley now," Benson said. "Look at those trees! Look at
those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple paradise!
Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!"

It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across the
flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the Dalmatians
was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.

"Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil? Planted
the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And now twelve
thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular show place for the
Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here in their machines to see
the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo Lettunich--he's one of the
originals. Entered through Castle Garden and became a dish-washer.
When he laid eyes on this valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he
leases seven hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the
finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty thousand
boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't let a soul but a
Dalmatian pick a