Suddenly we came in sight of tall der- inky petroleum falling to their feet, while ricks standing about the cañon, some on on their heads the live oaks wave their level spaces, and others poised on the dark green plumes. jagged edges of deep arroyos half way On the way back the manager told us up the mountain sides. Near them were of numerous wells that they had lately huge black tanks, into which the viscid opened on Tar Creek, whose flow hadfluid is pumped. The manager told us exceeded their most sanguine expecta that one of these wells, when first opened, tions. The road to them is exceedingly flowed a thousands barrels a day, and rough, and was built at a cost of $5,000 still another had averaged eighty thou- to the company. Seven-eighths of all the sand barrels a year. The drilling of oil produced in the State comes from them is a slow and expensive process, Ventura County. The shipments of her requiring great care and judgment, and crude oil alone amount to 15,000 barrels powerful machinery. Pipes from every direction form a perfect net-work on the ground. One twenty horse-power engine is made to pump five of these wells. Telephone wires connect all the oil works with each other, and with the various shipping points on the line. Crossing an intervening ridge, we descended into another picturesque cañon in which are similar oil works. Gas is used in the furnace, and the swirling, lambent flame from the escape pipe gave a weird touch to the picture. These Santa Paula mountains are like barbarian warriors, their faces tattooed with shining black, their streaming locks of per month. This is largely used in the place of coal in the manufacturing establishments on the Coast. In the evening we attended a festival at the town hall. Margaret and I felt tired and travel-stained, so we begged for the seclusion of a quiet corner where we could look on without attracting any special attention. "It is difficult to realize that all these people belong here, as I well recollect when some half dozen families made up the social world of this valley from the Camulos to the Olivas Rancho. How long ago it seems!" and Margaret gave a quick little sigh of retrospection. De Forrest took possession of the nearest chair, composedly remarking, "I am going to give you a mean advantage of these Santa Paulites by taking you through a sort of one-sided introduction to them. Suppose I begin with the ministers, as I have not forgotten your interest in church matters, Miss Margaret. That is the Universalist clergyman - the tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with the iron-gray hair. Those two pleasant-faced gentlemen on his right are the pastors of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches here, and are good friends of mine. You look incredulous, but I assure you there are still a few of the faithful who count on my conversion even at the eleventh hour. Ah! there's a good fellow in spite of his perfect submersion in learning - that scholarly little man in glasses. He is the professor of the new academy. Of course you recognize the manager in that handsome, frank-faced gentleman towering through the crowd with his arms full of flowers! We call him the Oil King, and you can see at a glance that he is a universal favorite. Everybody crowds around him, as if he were the dispenser of greater favors than roses. They are from his beautiful garden up the cañon, where he has more than a hundred varieties of choice budded rose trees. Now, there is romance, not in a nut-shell, but in a corner! That young couple have been holding hands behind those screening evergreens ever since we came. Lovers are like evil deeds they cannot bear the light. That pretty, refined lady serving creams at the table? O, that's the local editor of the paper here. You may not be aware that in some towns the heads of the newspaper are treated with a deference that would make a city editor drunk with happiness. The Weekly Tripod, for instance, carries all the force of an oracle to its immediate round of readers, and woe betide him that dares question its judgments, or set at naught its decrees! The scriptural retribution apportioned to the Pharisees is mild in comparison to his! I know whereof I speak, for on one occasion I was the unlucky wight who came under editorial displeasure, and I assure you that I yet suffer from the effects of the shock." "There!" I cried triumphantly. "I thought you couldn't wade through such an amount of gossip without saying something ill-natured. I insist, by way of punishment, that you introduce me immediately to the editor." "Hush!" he answered with a smile, "Miss Abbie is going to sing. We did not need to be urged to quiet, for the first note of that exquisite voice struck a silence across the crowded hall from platform to vestibule. The clear tones rose and fell like bird-notes in a luminous sky. "Who is she?", Margaret whispered, visibly affected. "Our nearest neighbor at Saticoy. Her voice is much improved by her recent studies in the East," De Forrest answered, politely suppressing a yawn. I often found myself wondering if his superb indifference were natural, or only a well-simulated disguise, behind which the real man rejoiced and suffered like the rest of us. After the festival closed we were persuaded to rest at Santa Paula that night, instead of going on to Saticoy as we had intended doing. It was late in the afternoon of the next day ere we started for our seven miles' ride to Saticoy. Our way led through the upper portion of one of the finest avenues in California. It is seventeen miles in length, and is the general thoroughfare from Santa Paula to San Buenaventura. Clinging to the road on both sides are extensive orchards of apricot and walnut trees, while countless acres of beans stretch away to the mountains on the one hand, and to the river on the other. "And only think! When I was a lit among these kindly people! Nothing could exceed their unobtrusive care for our comfort. The pleasant rooms were tle girl this was all a vast forest of beehaunted mustard-blooms, in which the traveler would get lost as easily as in an Indian jungle. I remember once I climbed the highest hill back of my father's place, and saw from its top only one house besides our own, and that was the old Briggs rancho, three miles away.' And Margaret looked about her wistfully. m. 22 Through the pepper hedges we caught swift visions of opulent homes, with wide-winged barns in the rear and happy children at play among the scarlet geraniums. These brilliant flowers flamed out from every crevice in the trees, and gave an indescribable warmth and beauty to these wayside pictures. A sharp turn through the peppers, a glimpse of shaded porch and gabled roof, and then our whole attention was absorbed by a nearer object. Stepping out from a' DOROTHY. filled with books and flowers, and on the walls were paintings done by the Judge's wife, which, Margaret said, "had won medal from the Queen's own hand some forty years ago." Dorothy must have inherited an artistic sense, for in arrang ми ing her mammoth clusters of Flaming Tokays and Black Hamburgs, with their trailing leaves and tendrils, she unconsciously observed the charm of contrast to a faultless degree. Margaret bent enraptured over a creamy magnolia blossom set upright in a delicate vase, declaring it the most perfect she had ever seen. I thought she looked annoyed when De Forest offered to get her a larger one from the same tree. Though they had known each other years ago, I felt that, to Margaret at least, their mutual association promised little pleasure. "I thought he was East or I should never have come a step with Uncle," she said. wearily the night before, when we were alone in our room at the Camulos. the riotous vineyard, her arms loaded with purple and crimson grapes, a young woman awaited our approach with questioning, smiling eyes. There was a touch of quaint simplicity about the noble and gracious outlines of the figure that would have inspired an artist's pencil. "Ah, Dorothy has been gathering grapes for you, instead of killing the fatted calf," the Judge said humorously, as he helped Margaret to alight. The next morning as we opened our blinds there were thick beads of moisture on the window-panes. "The poor farmers!" Margaret exclaimed pitifully, beginning a hasty How sweet the home-coming was brushing of her long auburn hair. We knew that a rain now would make com- limb and spicy in breath, its brown paratively valueless the fields of cut boughs at all times draped in brightest beans we had seen the day before. It lace-like green, and hung with sprays of was only a fog, however, which would be of actu beans from shell ing out so readily in the cutting. This day and the next were spent restfully in the Judge's home. On the third morning at breakfast he announced his intention of going to Hueneme on business, scarlet berries and ephemeral sea-green flowers, it sweeps the earth in sweet humility, though its graceful beauty and lavish shade are a perpetual ravishment to the senses of the warm and dust-stained traveler. "The swaying of pepper branches always reminds me of the motion of sea mosses in waves," the Judge said, his eyes lingering upon the flowing curtains of the trees, which the breeze had caught aside to show us the fenceless fields of bean vines beyond. Under a fleckless sky a radiant autumn sun was everywhere at work, coloring, mellowing, and drying the fruits of orchard, vineyard, and field. and gave one of us leave to ride the We drove through the town of Saticoy, whose arms outspread from the very lap of one of the richest agricultural valleys in California. Its prosperous homes look out upon a hundred farms and orchards, whose bountiful harvests fill her great warehouses from floor to roof. More than two million pounds of Lima beans and eight hundred thousand pounds of the small white bean were shipped from Saticoy the past season, and her present crop bid fair to double those amounts. We passed the stately little church, pointing reverently to the blue heavens from behind the pepper rows. Of all the trees in California, the pepper is to my mind the most beautiful. Noble in A Saticoy pumpkin patch is the jolliest spectacle that one can well imagine. The monstrous globes are of all shades of polished orange and olive green. They make a sumptuous display, rolling and tumbling among their coarse, flaring leaves and pipey stems, their golden goblets of blossoms choked by hot and dusty bees. Some of the more venture some push their bulging cheeks through the fence, or hook their necks over the topmost board, looking all the while so audaciously good-natured that you laugh and wink in sympathy. "Such a pumpkin field as that would furnish Thanksgiving pies for all New England," my companion smilingly observed. The owner of these vines had marked out one to send to the Los Angeles Fair. It bore five pumpkins, the smallest weighing one hundred, and the largest nearly three hundred pounds. He told us that the year before he had cut a pumpkin through the middle, and set his three young children in the under half. I wondered if the children were particularly small, or if any pumpkin could possibly exceed in size the one before me. The canary-seed raised about here is pretty enough for a bouquet. It is profitable as well, one of the farmers having raised three thousand pounds on less than five acres of land. South of the town we crossed the Santa Clara river, loitering along its sandy bed as if it were loth to reach the sea. Before us lay the vast plains of La Colonia, which was at one time in possession of Thomas A. Scott, the great railroad magnate. Some twenty years ago, two of the first settlers here cut twenty-five tons of wild black mustard, which they cleaned and sold for two cents a pound. Now the rancho is one endless stubble-field of late cut grain, with a surface so level that the home fields and the groves of eucalyptus scattered about have much the appearance of islands on a waveless ocean. La Colonia contains thirty-five thousand acres of excellent farming land, which is capable of a high state of cultivation, as its supply of artesian water is inexhaustible. The roads at this season are covered |