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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 38

The Vineyards

The Vineyards.

On the rich bottom lands there are a few vineyards. They are quite thirfty and produce good crops. They are irrigated in the month of May Of the character of the raisins produced I am not able to say with certainty. Some say they are good, and others that they shrivel after being packed, although at first they appear good. By far the greatest portion of the raisins are produced upon high, dry flats and steep hillsides, some of the vineyards extending down to the Mediterranean Sea. The soil, wherever I have been, is a strong rocky loam, sometimes red, sometimes more of a yellow cast, very full of stones; in some cases the whole surface was covered so that no soil could be seen. I have seen vines producing good crops on hillsides so steep that it is with difficulty that a person can pick the grapes. In the most thrifty vine-yards—those in Veja—the vines will equal many in California, but those on dry land are very small. These vineyards are not planted in such regular rows as we find in California, but are often very much out of line. When a vine dies out it is the custom to layer in its place, and if it is a foot or so out of the row it is not noticed; it is not of so much importance as they work the ground wholly by hand, giving it two workings in the year.