A ride across the breezy Plains, ten miles to the south, brought us to the ranch and vineyard of Mr. Ben. D. Wilson, noted over all the Coast for his excellent fruits and wines. "Don Benito" Wilson, he is called out there, and the name is a good one. Without much urban polish, he is nevertheless one of nature's noblemen, and a fine Representative Californian. A Tennessean by birth, long before the acquisition of California, he had hunted and trapped across the continent, living for years among the Utes and Apaches, and finally marrying a California señorita, with three leagues square of land, had settled down here. His noble ranch lies at the foot of the Coast Range of mountains, with their snow-clad summits towering above, the Los Angelos plains in front stretching away to the ocean, while an intervening roll of hills shuts out the raw winds and fogs of the summer and autumn. Two or three dashing rivulets, that issue from the mountains like threads of silver, have been caught up and carried by _acequias_ all along the slopes, whence they are distributed wherever the thirsty soil in summer needs them. Here he has orange, lemon, peach, olive, almond, and English walnut groves, by the many acres, while beyond are his vineyards by the hundred acres--part planted by himself, but many a half century ago by the Jesuit Fathers. Just now, his vineyards, trimmed closely as they were, looked for all the world like a Delaware or Jersey field of old peach-trees, with the tops sawn off, as we sometimes see them here. Without trellis or support of any kind, these aged vines stood stiff and gnarled, in rows five or six feet apart, themselves about as many inches thick; but in summer, they throw out runners, that form a leafy wilderness, loaded down with the purpling clusters. In addition, he had great herds of horses, and cattle, and flocks of sheep by the thousand, that roamed over his outlying broad acres and the Los Angelos plains at will. In sauntering through his orange-groves, he showed us trees, from which he had gathered twenty-five dollars' worth of the golden fruit each, that season, and one that yielded him forty dollars' worth. A few of his oranges, dead ripe, were still gleaming amid the rich, deep green of their peculiar foliage, and we had some of these fresh and luscious on the table each meal we took with him. In his wine-cellars, back of the mansion, he showed us two hundred thousand gallons of wine, the product of that year's vintage alone, and it hadn't been much of a year for wine either. This he reported to be worth only fifty cents a gallon then, but as increasing in price, of course, with age. He made both white and red wine, of a superior brand, and had branch houses in San Francisco and New York, that disposed of the bulk of it at fair figures. It all had the peculiar sharpness and alcoholic qualities of the California wines generally; but, he thought, with more careful culture, and increasing age, their