Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/251

Rh sleep that had fallen upon her after her hectic carouse in the days of 'Forty-nine. The reason might have been sought and found in the little bungalow farm on which Brainerd had spent so many years. The sagebrushers had ceased living on jack-rabbits and wild honey. They had discovered the value of irrigation; the fact that fruit trees grew better out of the bottom lands, because in the bottom lands the water level is too variable; that values are to be found in apparent desert or gravel wash; that improvements are possible in the quality of fruit; that there are moisture-conserving possibilities in plain cultivation; in short, that the land responds to intelligent treatment. Southern California was beginning to be dotted with little settlements. The old careless, lusty, lavish days were everywhere passing. These discoveries, simple as Columbus's egg, had rarely been made by the older inhabitants. They were made by the immigrants.

These immigrants were of a class never seen before. They were mainly people with considerable or even abundant means who had come to California for a change of climate. They had invalids in the family; or they were plain sick of bad weather and saw no reason why, having retired from business or sold their farm, they should continue to live in it. These people bought places and small farms or orange groves, not primarily with the idea of making a profit out of them, but simply to have pleasant and beautiful places in which to live. They made of them bowers of blossom and vine; and incidentally they experimented in fine fruits, or especial crops of some sort, or just to see whether anything would grow in the most unlikely places. In this, the most favourable atmosphere for leisurely experiment, grew finally a great body of information and accomplishment. The thickskinned, dry, sour California oranges, and the overgrown, spongy lemons had been improved until at the New Orleans exposition they took premiums from the world. The dried fruit industry had been invented, and then proved. And so, still uncorrelated, still scattered, the elements of modern California were being worked out. Actual profits were being made here and there! Moreover, they were large profits!

The news of these things began to trickle back to the East.