We have never done congratulating ourselves on possessing this cistern, for the water is always cool and sweet, and as our roof is very large, it soon fills the cistern, which holds three hundred barrels, and lasts all the year. The flume water, which we use in irrigation, and which is also laid on in the house for the boiler, etc., comes from the mountains in an open aqueduct or flume. It is at times full of moss and impurities, and is besides quite tepid in the summer. We had many discussions, standing on our front verandah, and looking down the rough hill slope, as to how the drive should be laid out. We meant to have an avenue of pepper trees on each side, and once these were planted, the road could not well be altered. Meanwhile, sixteen more acres had been cleared of roots and brush, ploughed and harrowed for more lemon trees. In the spring we planted seven hundred young trees, which made in all one thousand five hundred. The kitchen garden was set in order, and fenced in to keep out the squirrels and rabbits. They were a great nuisance that first year, but have now retired to their own wild part of the land, which certainly is roomy enough. The rattlesnakes, too, though we were constantly coming across them in the beginning, have now quietly withdrawn to the stony mountain tops. That first year I was haunted with the fear of those hideous creatures, and the dread of an accident to one of my dear ranchers. But all the same, it was a thrilling excitement when each one was caught and brought down to the barn to be gloated over; and though it was dead, it would still wriggle its ugly body, and snap its terrible jaws at anything that might touch it, and with the power still of deadly effect. One of the boys brought down from the hill a particularly large fellow, hanging on a forked stick, its frightful mouth gaping so wide open that the whole head seemed split in two, and big amber-coloured drops of the terrible poison hanging to its fangs. One certainly gets accustomed to anything; and here even the little children think nothing of killing a rattlesnake on their way to school. It is true they are easily killed, and are always in a hurry to get away. The danger is, of course, that one may tread on them unawares, for their skin is so like the colour of the ground. But on the road they are easily seen, and in walking through the brush one keeps a sharp look-out.