Part 19 (2/2)
In the southern counties olive orchards are being extensively planted.
Near San Fernando is the largest in the world, covering thirteen hundred acres. Doctors have said that a liberal use of California olive oil will do much to promote the good health of mankind, and it is thought by many that the manufacture of olive oil will be one of the greatest industries the state has known.
Nut raising is keeping pace with fruit in importance. To an Eastern person it seems strange to see nut-bearing trees cultivated in orchards; though profitable, this method does away with the pleasures of nutting parties.
California's crystallized fruits are in constant demand, especially for the Christmas trade. This crystallizing is a process in which the juice is extracted and replaced with sugar sirup, which hardens and preserves the fruit from decay while still keeping the shape.
One sometimes reads the saying, ”Fresno for raisins, Santa Clara for cherries and prunes, and the northern counties and mountain-ranches for apples.” But in fact, California's fruit industries are well distributed over the state, and the really excellent work which is being done in all sections will still advance as the people learn more of the necessary details and methods.
In spite of mistakes and experiments the steady progress on the California ranches is being recognized. Of one of our leading fruit growers, Mr. Eliwood Cooper of Santa Barbara, the Marquis of Lorne writes in the Youth's Companion: ”He has shown that California can produce better olive oil than France, Spain, or Italy, and English walnuts and European almonds in crops of which the old country hardly even dreams.”
A history of California's products would be incomplete without a reference to him who is called the ”Wonder Worker of Santa Rosa.”
”Magician! Conjurer!” are terms frequently applied to Mr. Luther Burbank, the man who is acknowledged by the scientists of the world to have done more with fruits and flowers than any other man. Mr. Burbank waves his wand, and the native poppy turns to deepest crimson, the white of the calla lily becomes a gorgeous yellow, rose and blackberry lose their thorns, the cactus its spines. The meat of the walnut and almond become richer in quality, while their sh.e.l.ls diminish to the thinness of a knife blade.
Yet in these seeming miracles there is nothing of ”black art” or sleight of hand. The experiments of this wonderful man, the surprising results he gains, are obtained, first by a close study of the laws of nature, then, where he desires change and improvement, by a.s.sisting her process, often through years of closest application and unceasing toil. He is a man of whom it is truthfully said, ”He has led a life of hards.h.i.+ps, has sacrificed self at every point, that he might glorify and make more beautiful the world around him.” Any boy or girl who knows something of how plants grow and reproduce themselves will find great pleasure in following Mr. Burbank's simple methods.
It is only recently that his countrymen have begun to appreciate the work of this great naturalist. A short time ago a resident of Berkeley, a student and book-lover, one who knew Mr. Burbank but had given little attention to his productions, was in Paris. While there he had the good fortune to be present at a lecture delivered before a gathering of the most eminent scientists of Europe. In the course of his address the speaker had occasion to mention the name of Luther Burbank. Instantly every man in the audience arose and stood a moment in silence, giving to the simple mention of Mr. Burbank's name the respect usually paid to the presence of royalty. It is a name now known in all the languages of the civilized world, and numbers of the wisest of the world's citizens cross the ocean solely to visit the busy plant-grower of Santa Rosa.
Luther Burbank was born in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1849, and while yet a lad his strongest desire was to produce new plants better than the old ones. His first experiment was with a vegetable. For the sake of getting seed, he planted some Early Rose potatoes in his mother's garden. In the whole patch only one seed-ball developed, and this he watched with constant care. Great was his disappointment, therefore, when one morning, just as it was ready to be picked, he found that it had disappeared. A careful search failed to recover the missing ball, but as he thought the matter over, while at work, it struck Luther that perhaps a dog had knocked it off in bounding through the garden. Looking more carefully for it, he found the ball twenty feet away from the vine on which it had hung. In it were twenty-three small, well-developed seeds. These he planted with great care, and from one of them came the first Burbank potatoes. The wealth of the country was materially increased by this discovery; the wealth of the boy only to the amount of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, which he used in attending a better school than he had before been able to enjoy.
In 1875 Mr. Burbank, to secure, as he said, ”a climate which should be an ally and not an enemy to his work,” moved to Santa Rosa, California.
For ten years of poverty and severe toil he was engaged, for the sake of a livelihood, in the nursery business, making, in the meantime, such experiments as he had time for. During the next twenty years, however, Mr. Burbank was able to give nearly his whole time to his nature-studies. His energy is tireless, and his aim is to supply to humanity something for beauty, sustenance, or commerce better than it has possessed.
Perhaps among all his productions the greatest good to the world will arise from the spineless cactus. The scourge of the American desert is the cactus, commonly known as the p.r.i.c.kly pear, the whole surface of which is covered with fine, needlelike spines, while its leaves are filled with a woody fiber most hurtful to animal life. When eaten by hunger-crazed cattle it causes death. After years of labor Mr. Burbank has succeeded in developing from this most unpromising of plants a perfected cactus which is truly a storehouse of food for man and beast.
Spines and woody fiber have disappeared, leaving juicy, pear-shaped leaves, weighing often twenty-five or fifty pounds, which, when cooked in sirup, make a delicious preserve, and in their natural state furnish a nouris.h.i.+ng, thirst-quenching food for domestic animals. The fruit of this immense plant is aromatic and delicate, and its seeds are at present worth far more than their weight in gold, since from them are to spring thousands of plants by means of which it is believed the uninhabitable portions of the desert may be made to support numberless herds of cattle.
Another of Mr. Burbank's achievements is the evergreen crimson rhubarb, which is not only far less acid than the old variety, but richer in flavor and a giant in size.
The pomato, a tomato grown on a potato plant, is most interesting. The plant is a free bearer, having a white, succulent, delicious fruit, admirable when cooked, used in a salad, or eaten fresh as our other fruit.
The experiments with prunes conducted at the Santa Rosa ranch have been of the greatest value to the state. For forty years the prune growers of the Pacific slope had been searching for a variety of this fruit which would be as rich in sugar and as abundant a bearer as the little California prune of commerce, and yet of a larger size, and earlier in its time of ripening. Mr. Burbank with his famous sugar prune filled all these requirements, and revolutionized the prune industry of the state.
Besides this triumph he has succeeded in obtaining a variety of this fruit having a sh.e.l.l-less kernel, so that the fruit when dried much resembles those which are artificially stuffed.
The flowers which Mr. Burbank has evolved by his methods, and those which he has simply enlarged and glorified, are far too numerous to be named here.
In 1905 a grant of ten thousand dollars a year was bestowed upon Mr.
Burbank by the Carnegie Inst.i.tution of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., for the purpose of a.s.sisting him in his experiments. Seldom has money been better placed.
Chapter XVI
The Hidden Treasures of Mother Earth
Thousands of years ago, before the time of which we have any history, there were rivers in California,--rivers now dead,--whose sides were steeper and whose channels were wider than those of the rivers in the same part of the world to-day. Rapid streams they were, and busy, too; was.h.i.+ng away from the rocks along their sides the gold held there, dropping the yellow grains down into the gravelly beds below. After a time there came down upon these rivers a volcanic outflow; great quant.i.ties of ashes, streams of lava and cement, burying them hundreds of feet deep, until over them mountain ridges extended for miles and miles.
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