the ease of
out-door labor distributed through the year, the certainty of returns
for intelligent investment with labor, the equability of summer and
winter, and the adaptation to personal health. There are always
disadvantages attending the development of a new country and the
evolution of a new society. It is not a small thing, and may be one of
daily discontent, the change from a landscape clad with verdure, the
riotous and irrepressible growth of a rainy region, to a land that the
greater part of the year is green only where it is artificially watered,
where all the hills and unwatered plains are brown and sere, where the
foliage is coated with dust, and where driving anywhere outside the
sprinkled avenues of a town is to be enveloped in a cloud of powdered
earth. This discomfort must be weighed against the commercial advantages
of a land of irrigation.

[Illustration: GARDEN SCENE, SANTA ANA.]

What are the chances for a family of very moderate means to obtain a
foothold and thrive by farming in Southern California? I cannot answer
this better than by giving substantially the experience of one family,
and by saying that this has been paralleled, with change of details, by
many others. Of course, in a highly developed settlement, where the land
is mostly cultivated, and its actual yearly produce makes its price very
high, it is not easy to get a foothold. But there are many regions--say
in Orange County, and certainly in San Diego--where land can be had at a
moderate price and on easy terms of payment. Indeed, there are few
places, as I have said, where an industrious family would not find
welcome and cordial help in establishing itself. And it must be
remembered that there are many communities where life is very simple,
and the great expense of keeping up an appearance attending life
elsewhere need not be reckoned.

A few years ago a professional man in a New England city, who was in
delicate health, with his wife and five boys, all under sixteen, and one
too young to be of any service, moved to San Diego. He had in money a
small sum, less than a thousand dollars. He had no experience in farming
or horticulture, and his health would not have permitted him to do much
field work in our climate. Fortunately he found in the fertile El Cajon
Valley, fifteen miles from San Diego, a farmer and fruit-grower, who had
upon his place a small unoccupied house. Into that house he moved,
furnishing it very simply with furnitu