Carson enjoyed the social part of this treat, more than the tempting viands with which the board was loaded. Though Spanish was the language most used by the family, all spoke English, and a young man from Massachusetts was with them as a tutor to some of the younger children. Breakfast over, the host invited him to visit the vineyard, which he said was hardly in condition to be exhibited, as the picking had commenced two weeks before. He said his yard, of a thousand varas, yielded him more grapes than he could manage to dispose of, though last year he had made several butts of wine, and dried five thousand pounds of raisins. The vines were in the form of little trees, so closely had they been trimmed, and were still loaded with the purple clusters. Tasting them, Carson justly remarked that he had never eaten so good a grape. "No," said his host, "I think not; neither have I, though I have traveled through Europe. The valley of the Rhine, nor of the Tagus, produces anywhere a grape like ours. I think that the Los Angelos grape is fit food indeed for angels--is quite equal to the grapes of Eshcol--you remember the heavy clusters that were found there, so that two men carried one between them on a pole resting upon their shoulders. See that now," and he drew Carson to a vine whose trunk was six inches through, and yet it needed a prop to sustain the weight of the two clusters of grapes it bore. A species of the cactus, called the prickly pear, enclosed the vineyard, and this really bore pears, or a fruit of light orange color, in the form of a pear, but covered with a down of prickles. The Indian boy brought a towel, and wiping the fruit until it shone, gave to Carson to taste. It was sweetish, juicy, and rich, but with less of flavor than a pear. Beyond the vineyard were groves of fig and orange trees. The figs were hardly ripe, being the third crop of the season, while the oranges were nearly fit for picking. The host said that his oranges were better than usual this season, but he did not know what he should do with them. He was in the habit of shipping them to Santa Barbara and Monterey, and thence taking some to San Jose; but latterly oranges had been brought to Monterey from the Sandwich islands by ships in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, returning from the China trade to the mouth of the Columbia, which, arriving before his were ripe, he found the fruit market forestalled.