Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/382

 362 they are wholly above-ground. The casks rest on wooden sills upheld by short brick posts. In the cellars of General Naglee, a successful maker of brandy on a large scale, the cobwebs have been allowed to increase and hang like tattered banners. Through these the light penetrates dimly from above, or with a white glare from a latticed window, upon which the patterns of vine-leaves without are defined. The buildings are brown, gray, and vine-clad, with quaint, Dutch-pavilion-looking roofs, and dove-cotes attached. A lofty water-tank, with a wind-mill a feature of every California rural homestead here is more tower-like than usual. Round about extend long avenues of eucalyptus, pine, tamarind, with its black, dry pods; the pepper-tree, with its scarlet berries; large clumps of the nopal cactus, and an occasional maguey, or century-plant. All is glowing now with the tints of autumn. Poplar and cottonwood are yellow. The peach and almond, the Lawton black-berry, and the vineyards themselves, touched by frost, supply the scarlet and crimson. The country seems bathed in a fixed sunshine, or in hues of its own wines. The vines, themselves short and stout, and needing no support, yield each an incredible number of purple clusters, all growing from the top. They quaintly suggest the uncouth little men of Hendrik Hudson who stagger up the mountain, in "Rip Van Winkle," with kegs of spirits on their shoulders.

No especial attention is given to the frosts now, but those of the early spring are the object of many precautions. The most effectual is to kindle smudge-fires about the vineyard toward four o'clock in the morning, the smoke of which envelops it and keeps it in a warmer atmosphere of its own till the sun be well risen.

Three to four tons of grapes to the acre are counted