They Are Perfectly Hilarious In Their Newly Found Life, Work
Like Ants In A Sunny Noonday, And, Looking Far Into
The future,
hopefully count their orange chicks ten years or more before they are
hatched; supporting themselves in the meantime
On the produce of a few
acres of alfalfa, together with garden vegetables and the quick-growing fruits, such as figs, grapes, apples, etc., the whole
reinforced by the remaining dollars of their land purchase money.
There is nothing more remarkable in the character of the colony than
the literary and scientific taste displayed. The conversation of most
I have met here is seasoned with a smack of mental ozone, Attic salt,
which struck me as being rare among the tillers of California soil.
People of taste and money in search of a home would do well to
prospect the resources of this aristocratic little colony.
If we look now at these southern valleys in general, it will appear at
once that with all their advantages they lie beyond the reach of poor
settlers, not only on account of the high price of irrigable land - one
hundred dollars per acre and upwards - but because of the scarcity of
labor. A settler with three or four thousand dollars would be
penniless after paying for twenty acres of orange land and building
ever so plain a house, while many years would go by ere his trees
yielded an income adequate to the maintenance of his family.
Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to
form a reliable inducement for very sick people.
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