rare distinction of being the only man in California elected, in 1869, to the Legislature fairly and squarely on the Fifteenth Amendment issue. They find their business so profitable that they have bought another ranch of only forty-five thousand acres in San Luis Obispo County, which they were then stocking. They intend to carry on both dairies, but the business of each will be kept separate, and the style of the firms will be "Steele Brothers of San Mateo," and "Steele Brothers of San Luis Obispo." For the prices realized for their butter and cheese—they are too far from the city to sell their milk—see the market quotations in the San Francisco dailies. Yet California imports immense quantities of butter and cheese annually, while there are still millions of acres of cheap, unoccupied grazing lands scattered all through the State, from San Diego to Del Norte, and from the coast to the far recesses of the Sierra Nevada.
Mr. Steele asked us to walk back into the garden, and see what could be done in six years in the way of fruit-raising on land which had, until quite recently, been supposed fit only to raise jackass-rabbits and long-horned, worthless, and savage Spanish cattle. A little "arroyo" comes down from the canon in the mountains near the house, and makes a bend around the ground selected for the garden. Along the bank of this "arroyo" willows and other trees were planted to aid the large, scattered live-oaks which stood there in breaking the winds. Thus sheltered, the apple, pear, fig, plum, apricot, peach, soft-shelled almond, and other trees, grew up like weeds, and
