The raisin harvest has just begun; the vineyards are full of workers, grape-pickers are stooping by every vine, and are arranging the grapes on small square or oblong trays, large enough to be easily handled; teams with trucks are passing between the vines distributing the trays or piling them up in small, square stacks at every row. Some trays with their amber grapes lie flat on the ground in long continuous rows between the vines, others again are slightly raised so as to catch as much of the sun as possible. In some vineyards the laborers are turning the partially cured and dried raisins by placing one tray on top of another, and then turning them quickly over. In other places, again, the trays with the raisins already cured are stacked in low piles, so as to exclude the sun and air, and at other stacks a couple of men at each are busy assorting the grapes, and placing the various grades in different sweatboxes, large enough to hold one hundred pounds each. In every vineyard, large and small, we find the hands at work, and every one able and willing to do a day’s work is engaged to harvest the large crop. The most of the pickers are Chinese, at least in the larger vineyards, while in the smaller vineyards, where large gangs of men are not absolutely necessary, white men and boys are generally employed. The fame of the raisin section and the harvest has spread far and wide, and at picking time laborers gather from all parts of the State to take part in the work, and find remunerative wages at from $1.25 to $1.50 per day. The country now swarms with pickers of all nationalities,--Germans, Armenians, Chinese, Americans, Scandinavians, etc., and as the schools have closed in order to allow the children to take part in the work, boys of all sizes are frequently seen kneeling at the vines. The crop this year is very heavy, many vines yielding two trays or even three, containing twenty pounds each, and, as the trays are generally placed in alternate rows between the vines, we see, as we pass, continuous lines of them filled with grapes in various stages of curing, from the green to the amber-colored and the dark of the fully-cured raisin. The aroma from the drying berries is noticeable, and the breeze is laden with the spicy and pronounced odor of the Muscatel raisins.