Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/415

 Rh As to the Temperance Colony, it must be sorely tried in a locality the most liberal and profitable yield of which is the wine grape. It seems hardly a propitious place to have chosen. Scoffers say that in some instances while settlers will not make wine themselves they will sell their grapes to the wine-making establishments. This I merely note as "important, if true."

The standard twenty-acre lot, as prepared for market at Fresno, has its main irrigating ditch, of perhaps four feet in width, connecting with the general irrigating system. For twelve and a half dollars a year it receives a water-right entitling it to the use of whatever water it may need. The buyer must make his own minor ditches, and prepare his ground from this point. He usually aims to establish in his fields a number of slightly differing level, that the water may be led to one after the other. For ground in the preliminary condition described about fifty dollars per acre is demanded. Most of the earlier settlers bought for less, and the price named strikes one as high, considering the newness of the country, and the excellent farming land to be had in the older parts of the country for less. Prices are less here, however, than at Los Angeles, Riverside, or San Diego, farther south.

It is argued in answer to objectors that though land be not nominally it is really cheap, in consideration of its extraordinary productiveness. It is held that an investment here gives better returns than anywhere, and at the same time that the climate and other conditions promise a more pleasurable existence than could be enjoyed elsewhere. This Fresno land, for instance, yields four and five crops of alfalfa a year. Vineyards planted but two and a half years are shown which produce five tons of grapes to the acre. Five years is the period required for the vines to come into full bearing. It is estimated that an acre of