olid, vigorous growth. It is altogether an attractive city, whether
seen on a drive through its well-planted and bright avenues, or looked
down on from the hills which are climbed by the cable roads. A curious
social note was the effect of the "boom" excitement upon the birth
rate. The report of children under the age of one year was in 1887, 271
boy babies and 264 girl babies; from 1887 to 1888 there were only 176
boy babies and 162 girl babies. The return at the end of 1889 was 465
boy babies, and 500 girl babies.

[Illustration: OLIVE-TREES SIX YEARS OLD.]

Although Los Angeles County still produces a considerable quantity of
wine and brandy, I have an impression that the raising of raisins will
supplant wine-making largely in Southern California, and that the
principal wine producing will be in the northern portions of the State.
It is certain that the best quality is grown in the foot-hills. The
reputation of "California wines" has been much injured by placing upon
the market crude juice that was in no sense wine. Great improvement has
been made in the past three to five years, not only in the vine and
knowledge of the soil adapted to it, but in the handling and the curing
of the wine. One can now find without much difficulty excellent table
wines--sound claret, good white Reisling, and sauterne. None of these
wines are exactly like the foreign wines, and it may be some time before
the taste accustomed to foreign wines is educated to like them. But in
Eastern markets some of the best brands are already much called for, and
I think it only a question of time and a little more experience when the
best California wines will be popular. I found in the San Francisco
market excellent red wines at $3.50 the case, and what was still more
remarkable, at some of the best hotels sound, agreeable claret at from
fifteen to twenty cents the pint bottle.

It is quite unnecessary to emphasize the attractions of Santa Barbara,
or the productiveness of the valleys in the counties of Santa Barbara
and Ventura. There is no more poetic region on the continent than the
bay south of Point Conception, and the pen and the camera have made the
world tolerably familiar with it. There is a graciousness, a softness, a
color in the sea, the canons, the mountains there that dwell in the
memory. It is capable of inspiring the same love that the Greek
colonists felt for the region between the bays of Salerno and Naples. It
is as fruitful as the