As soon as you leave the city you will see the grapevines growing. Some are trained upon a low prop, as in France or Germany, others climb a staff and look like hops, while many vines creep up the poplar trees and stretch their tendrils across to the next tree, so that the tree trunks are all connected and form a cool, vine-covered lane for hundreds of rods. The vines are thus trained to form cool drives for the owners, and they are especially seductive when the great bunches of ripe fruit hang just high enough out of reach to be tantalizing. Little canals trickle here, there and everywhere among the fields of vines, and thus keep the roots ever moist. The prosperity of Mendoza is bound up in these tiny little streams, which give life to the grape, the onion and potato, for it seldom rains here. The day of my visit the sky became overcast with dark, foreboding clouds, as though a terrific storm was threatening. I hesitated to venture forth. The landlord said, “It looks this way nearly every day but it never rains.” I found out this statement was true and that rain is a rare event. The development of the wine industry in the Mendoza district has been almost phenomenal. The greater part of the wine produced is not of a high quality, so that it appeals only to the masses and not to the connoisseur. The wealthier classes are satisfied with nothing less than the finest of European wines and champagnes. The quality of the grapes produced is of the finest, and the very best European varieties have been imported. The profits in some years are almost fabulous, for a few acres will bring in a handsome return. Some of the wine-manufacturing establishments are quite large and produce great quantities of that liquor so popular in all Spanish countries. The presses, vats, casks and everything in them is of the latest design. One will find wines leaving these establishments with Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle and Muscatel labels. It is shipped in both cask and bottle, and one will see high ox-carts and cumbersome wagons loaded with large casks on their way to the railroad station on almost any road leading to Mendoza. Thousands of tons of the grapes are shipped each year in the fruit form, for it is a peculiarly luscious growth and the bunches attain enormous size. Other fruits have been found to grow equally well at Mendoza and fruit canning is becoming quite an industry there. Peaches, pears and plums grow to good size and of good flavour, while apples, quinces and cherries do very well. The fruit culture is spread over a wide area of country and the culture is rapidly increasing. It is the boast of the Argentinian that the country is capable of producing every conceivable species of fruit, and it is not an idle boast. If the same care was taken that they give that industry in California they could flood the markets of Europe with their fruits. The general trouble is that the trees grow so easily