Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/406

 386 of Fresno, two hundred miles below San Francisco, and about midway between two important streams, the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers, is in the midst of a particularly desolate tract, known, up to a very recent period, as the San Joaquin Desert. One should alight here. There is no better place for examining the marvellous capabilities of a soil which appears at first sight inhospitable to the last degree. Fresno is in the hands of enterprising persons, who push and advertise it very actively. We heard at San Francisco of the Fresno Colony, the Central Colony, American Colony, Scandinavian Colony, Temperance Colony, Washington Colony, and others of similar names clustered around Fresno. It is advertised as one of those genial places, alluring to the imagination of most of us, where one can sit down under his own vine and fig-tree, secure from the vicissitudes of climate, and find a profitable occupation open to him in the cultivation of the soil, and all at a moderate cost. The aspect of things on alighting is very different from what had been expected, but all the substantial advantages claimed seemed realized, and the process of founding a home may be witnessed in all its stages. The town has a population of two thousand, most of which it has gained in the past five years. It is set down on the east side of the railroad highway, with a thin scattering of foliage slightly veiling the formality of its lines. It consists of a few streets of two-story wooden and brick buildings. The streets cross one another at right angles, and have planked sidewalks. A slight eminence above the general level is the site of the County Court-house, which somewhat resembles an Italian villa in design, and has Italian cypresses in front. The court-houses of half a dozen counties down the line, from Modesto, the capital of Stanislaus, to Bakersfield, capital of Kern, are identical