I have spoken of stock-raising. Dairying is a profitable industry. Poultry farming a little uncertain. If interested in mining there is much to explore. Just in this county are found gold, silver, copper, asphaltum, bituminous rock, gypsum, quicksilver, natural gas, and petroleum.
And what sort of a climate does one find? Santa Barbara is an all-year-round resort. It has all that one could ask.
"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea."
It is a perpetual summer—sometimes a cold and rainy June, sometimes a little too warm, sometimes a three days' sand-storm, disagreeable and trying; but it is always June, as we in New England know June. At least it is Juney from 9 A.M. until 4 P.M. Just before sunset the temperature falls. Then when the sun goes rapidly in or down it is like being out at sea. And to a sensitive patient, with nerves all on outside, chilled by the least coolness, it is unpleasantly piercing.
When any one describes Santa Barbara to you as a town
"Where winds are hushed nor dare to breathe aloud,
Where skies seem never to have borne a cloud,"
remember that this applies truthfully to "a Santa Barbara day," but not to all days. Surf bathers go in every month of the year. But this does not alter the fact that a person would be disappointed and consider himself deceived if he accepted the general idea of absolute heaven on earth. The inhabitants do not wish such exaggerations and misrepresentations to go forth. California can bear to have the whole truth told, and still be far ahead. Who wants eternal sunshine, eternal monotony?
The temperature during the day varies little. I see that one resident compares it with May in other parts of the country. I think he has never tried to find a picnic day in early May in New England. He says: "Our coldest month is warmer than April at Philadelphia, and our warmest one much cooler than June at same place." They did have one simoon in 1859, when the mercury rose to 133°, and stayed there for eight hours. Animals and birds died, trees were blasted and burned, and gardens ruined. But that was most "unusual."
Flannels are worn the year round. Average of rain, seventeen inches. There are sixty-one mineral and medicinal springs in California that are already famous. Here we can take hot sulphur baths, and drink the nauseous water that is said to cure almost all diseases.
Farming is comparatively easy. But grapevines are smitten by a mysterious disease called "cellular degeneration," and phylloxera; a black scale that injures orange and olive, and a white scale that is worse. Apples are not free from worms; the gopher is sure to go for every root it can find. There was a serpent even in the original Eden. The historian remarks: "The cloddish, shiftless farmer is perhaps safer in Massachusetts." I think of experiences at "Gooseville," and decide not to buy, nor even rent a ranch, nor accept one if offered. "Fly to ills I know not of?" No, thank you!