The Raisin Industry: A practical treatise on the raisin grapes, their history, culture and curingEisen, Gustavus A.
History
The Raisin Industry: A practical treatise on the raisin grapes, their history, culture and curing
Eisen, Gustavus A.
Raisins; Viticulture -- California
But we are out of the hills. Smiling and glistening in the evening sun
lies San Diego Bay, with the elevated Point Loma, the ever-present
breakers on the bar, and away out on the low peninsula the gigantic and
turreted pile of the Hotel del Coronado, to say nothing of San Diego
itself, with its miles of marked town lots and villas. But I shall not
endeavor to describe this town and its bay and climate. The latter may
possibly not be excelled anywhere; the former lacks a most essential
thing,--an abundance of trees and vegetation. Still, with the water that
has lately been brought here the trees and flowers will come soon enough
we hope, when green lawns, bananas and palms will be ready to tell the
tale, and young plantations will be seen on the hills and around
roadway homes. But I forget I am bound for El Cajon and its raisin
vineyards, and must catch the train.
EL CAJON.
The country lying between San Diego and El Cajon does not at this time
of the year present many attractive features. The little train,
consisting of a locomotive, tender and a passenger car, wriggles itself
between brown, rolling hills, over small cañons, dry and sandy, without
any other vegetation than grass, and here and there a few evergreen
shrubs. Close to San Diego we pass along the Chollas valley and creek,
where an attempt has been made at colonization, as we understand it in
the San Joaquin valley. The land is divided up in ten and twenty-acre
tracts and dotted over with small and unpretentious cottages, as well as
with fine and expensive mansions. Young orchards of pears, olives,
prunes, oranges and figs are seen wedged in between vacant and unbroken
land. In the river bottom are Chinese gardens, with windmills, and
patches of cabbage, corn and small truck. Much of this land is irrigated
with water from the Sweetwater dam, some twelve miles away on the
Sweetwater river. On the bottom land there are a few Muscat vineyards,
for the supply of the San Diego market. I noticed the grapes there. They
were of the Muscat of Alexandria variety, very large and fine both as to
bunch and berry, and very sweet. I have seen no finer Alexandrias
anywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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