Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/310

304 without salt at any season of the year for three or four days at a time. The nights are quite cool during the whole year, and sickness of any kind is scarcely known or thought of. Nearly all the products of temperate climes except Indian corn flourish here. Oats and clover grow spontaneously in almost every part of the Province. The vine flourishes as well, perhaps, in California, as in any other portion of the world, and its fruit is the finest and decidedly the most delicious that we have ever tasted. There are many large vineyards in different parts of the country from which several thousand barrels of wine are annually made. The prickly pear is cultivated for its fruit. The peach and pear do well, but the apple is not so fine as in the United States. In the Southern part of California irrigation is necessary to the production of wheat and garden vegetables, but in the North this is seldom the case, the late winter rains being sufficient to perfect the harvest. But a small portion of the Province is yet in cultivation, the Spaniards, who comprise the chief population, being engaged principally in rearing and herding cattle and horses, for which both the climate and country are peculiarly adapted. Many individuals own several thousand animals, which are kept in bands, and require only the attention of a herdsman. They are always very wild and can be managed only by force. They are driven into a coral (a strong enclosure), once every year for the purpose of branding, etc. The Spaniards enter these corals on horseback with the lassoo, which is a rope made of rawhide, very strong, and formed into a running noose. Holding one end of this rope coiled in the left hand, they swing the extended noose with the right several times above the head, in order to open it, and to acquire momentum, and then throw it with almost unerring precision from thirty to forty feet, about the head of any animal they choose, making fast the end