igures are exact or not, there is no doubt
of the extraordinary success of the raisin industry, nor that this is a
region of great activity and promise.

The traveller has constantly to remind himself that this is a new
country, and to be judged as a new country. It is out of his experience
that trees can grow so fast, and plantations in so short a time put on
an appearance of maturity. When he sees a roomy, pretty cottage overrun
with vines and flowering plants, set in the midst of trees and lawns and
gardens of tropical appearance and luxuriance, he can hardly believe
that three years before this spot was desert land. When he looks over
miles of vineyards, of groves of oranges, olives, walnuts, prunes, the
trees all in vigorous bearing, he cannot believe that five or ten years
before the whole region was a waste. When he enters a handsome village,
with substantial buildings of brick, and perhaps of stone, with fine
school-houses, banks, hotels, an opera-house, large packing-houses, and
warehouses and shops of all sorts, with tasteful dwellings and lovely
ornamented lawns, it is hard to understand that all this is the creation
of two or three years. Yet these surprises meet the traveller at every
turn, and the wonder is that there is not visible more crudeness,
eccentric taste, and evidence of hasty beginnings.

[Illustration: A GRAPE-VINE, MONTECITO VALLEY, SANTA BARBARA.]

San Bernardino is comparatively an old town. It was settled in 1853 by
a colony of Mormons from Salt Lake. The remains of this colony, less
than a hundred, still live here, and have a church like the other sects,
but they call themselves Josephites, and do not practise polygamy. There
is probably not a sect or schism in the United States that has not its
representative in California. Until 1865 San Bernardino was merely a
straggling settlement, and a point of distribution for Arizona. The
discovery that a large part of the county was adapted to the orange and
the vine, and the advent of the Santa Fe railway, changed all that. Land
that then might have been bought for $4 an acre is now sold at from $200
to $300, and the city has become the busy commercial centre of a large
number of growing villages, and of one of the most remarkable orange and
vine districts in the world. It has many fine buildings, a population of
about 6000, and a decided air of vigorous business. The great plain
about it is mainly devoted to agricultural products, which are gro