Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/198

162 THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA Camellus, a Moravian monk who was the first Eu- ropean to describe its native habitat in Japan. In Sacramento's parks and gardens flourish the date-palm, the pomegranate and the bamboo. Over many a rose-hung wall and geranium hedge one catches a whiff of the tropics. Single oranges weighing two pounds and measuring seventeen inches in circumference were produced near Sacra- mento. When exhibited at St. Louis they took first prize for the largest ever grown. A certain fig tree in this region bears three crops a year, the sum of its fruit equalling a ton. At the gates of the city and beyond are Tokay vineyards, pear orchards, hop-fields and aspara- gus beds such as Sutter in his most confident ex- pectations could never have pictured when in 1839 he took unto himself all the acres that came under his vision and erected on the mound now enclosed within the city's limits 2 the stockade which his- torians place second only to the Missions in inter- est. It was said by Captain Sutter that he had been in 1830 an officer in the guard of Charles X and that he had lost his commission because he partici- pated in revolution. Therefore, he related upon his arrival in California, had he left France to seek his fortune in America. Not all of the gallant ad- venturer's tales have been verified, but it is certain 2 Corner 26th and K Sts. M Street or J Street cars.