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 364 upon; while farther south, where irrigation is used, they expect from eight to twelve. But it is claimed, in the standing controversy on the subject, that the irrigated grapes are watery, while those of lesser yield excel them in quality. The best results, we were told, are got from such vines as the Mataro, Carignane, and Grenache, imported cuttings from the French slope of the Pyrenees. There were at Le Franc's not less than sixty varieties, under probation, many of which will, no doubt, give an excellent, account of themselves. They are assembled from Greece, Italy, Palestine, and the Canary Islands, so that we have all the chances of the development of something suited to our peculiar conditions.

I left San José to drive along the dry, shallow bed of the Guadalupe River to the Guadalupe Quicksilver Mine, a more remote and less visited companion of well-known New Almaden. The mine is in a lovely little vale, with a settlement of Mexican and Chinese boarding-houses clustered around it. Some bold ledges of rock jut out above, and a superintendent's house surrounded by flowers hangs upon the hill-side. A weird-looking flume conveys the sulphurous acid from the calcining furnaces to a hill-top, upon which every trace of vegetation has been blasted by its poisonous exhalations.

Then I made a little tour by rail southward through the immense "Murphy" and "Miller and Lux" ranches, comprising a grain country as flat as a floor.

We turned west through the fertile little Pajaro Valley, the emporium of which for produce, and fine red-wood lumber, cut in great quantities on the adjoining Santa Cruz Mountains, is the thriving town of Watson-