new settler in this State is always strong to plant a vineyard; and I am moved, by much that I have seen,

xcept to encourage each other to another glass, and to wonder at the Eastern man who would not drink. There were two or three Indians staggering about the door; there was swearing and filthy talk inside; there was a pretentious tasting of this, that, and the other cask by a parcel of sots

e in the southern country, you may find many men cultivating the grape and making wine in all soberness. But everywhere, and in my own experience nearly as often, you will see the proprietor

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State to make wine. He runs too many risks with

the prosperity of the State and for the production of good wine, and whose skill and enterprise are honorable to them. But the best and most thoughtful of these men will bear me out when I say that wine growing and making is a

h smaller investment of capital and less skill than are required to establish a wine-cellar and make wine. The vineyard owners already complain that they can not always readily sell their crude wine at a paying price; but the market for carefully-made raisins is, as I am told by the principal fruit dealers in San Francisco, open and eager. To

raisin-making, which in 1871 had still a very uncertain future in this State, ma

en in puddings. This year, however, I have seen in several places good native raisins; and the head of the largest fruit-importing house in San Francisco told me that one raisin-maker last fall sold the whole of his crop there at $

different persons that at seven cents per pound raisins will pay the farmer very well. The Malaga and the White Muscat are the grapes which appear here to m

. They do not trim out poor grapes from the bunches, because, as they assert, there are none; but I suspect this will have to be done for the very finest raisins, such as would tempt a reluctant buyer. The bun

he bloom on the berries. They are kept in the raisin-house, I was told, five or six weeks, when they are dry enough to box. It is as yet customary to put them in twenty-five pound boxes, but, no doubt, as more experience is gained, farmers will contrive o

ear of an orchard of peach and apricot trees, which bears this year (1873) its first full crop, and for one hundred acres of which th

rchards of plums, and carefully dry the fruit, make as much money as the cherry owners. There has sprung up a very lively demand for California dried plums. They bring from twenty to twenty-two cents per po

acramento, and does not suffer from the curculio

co, in October, 1873, I found in the shops delicious dried figs, but not in great quantities, nor so thoroughly dried as to bear shipment to a distanc

aring, where its location is favorable, in its third or fourth year; and ought to yield then about sixty pounds of dried figs. I suspect the cost of lab

he fruit; and in one place I was told the birds took almost the whole of the first crop. There are many varieties of the fig grown in this State, but the White Smyrna is, I believe, thought

it-trees are surer and more profitable than grain. A considerable emigration is now coming into California; and I advise every one who goes there to farm to lose no time before planting an orcha

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