TWELFTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 737 



Conversation with any of the pioneer population will assure you of how 

 little the first comers suspected the great agricultural and horticultural 

 wealth of California — it is the constant theme of speeches at pioneer ban- 

 quets and reunions — how little value was placed upon the soil; yet standing 

 upon the shore of Suisun Bay, looking northward, up the great Sacra- 

 mento Valley, in June, if the eye could reach over its length and breadth, 

 it would sweep a field three hundred and fifty miles long, by an average of 

 sixty miles wide, covered, with scarcely an interruption, with wheat — one 

 broad wheat field, embracing an area of country almost equal to the State 

 of Indiana. The pioneer will tell you that the existence of this capacity 

 for cereal production was not suspected until many years after the first 

 settlement of the country. It was a hidden secret only because of the 

 power of tradition and habit upon the mind. The corn and wheat raisers 

 of the Northern States missed the showers of June and July, which con- 

 ferred growth upon the corn, ripened the wheat, and vivified the meadows 

 of his northern home. 



In short, California was not an agricultural country, if the art of agri- 

 culture, as taught us by our fathers, was to be adopted as the standard of 

 judgment. Here conditions of soil and climate differ, and an art of agri- 

 culture must be adopted suitable or supplementary to these conditions; the 

 seasons of seed time and harvest must be understood. The hard and 

 unresponsive soil of the great plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin 

 Valleys, parched under a rainless sky and a burning sun, and swept by the 

 hot north winds, looked wholly uninviting to eyes accustomed to the genial 

 showers of summer rain, and the vivifying influence of clouds and storms. 

 There were no books on the subject of agriculture to which we might 

 appeal for standards of experience; our agriculture had to be learned 

 entirely in the school of experiment. 



Against the discouragements of doubt, and the skepticism of advice, a few 

 began experiments in agriculture. These first experiments failed, but per- 

 sistency, accidental discovery, comparison of experience, were the tutors in 

 our school of agriculture. 



Fairs that were the first markets of the world, have ever been an im- 

 portant adjunct to agriculture. Under such conditions as have existed, and 

 do exist in California, an annual exhibition of the products of our soil and 

 climate have an educational value beyond that which is known in any 

 other country. The State, the district, and the county fairs were of incal- 

 culable value in the struggle for mastery of this new science of California 

 agriculture. The office then performed by annual exhibitions of the prod- 

 uct of our fields, orchards, and dairies, is educational in its character, and 

 it is the duty of every good citizen to aid in keeping them up to the stand- 

 ard of their true motive. The discovery of gold in California attracted to 

 her shores nearly all the civilized and semi-civilized races, and never was 

 land so fair, so blest by God and nature, so despoiled, as was California by 

 those who first visited her shores, after the discovery of gold, in the wild 

 desire for the attainment of sudden wealth. People did not come here to 

 make homes. The man broken in fortune, the penniless youth, the wily 

 adventurer, all looked upon her as the El Dorado of their hopes; they lusted 

 for her golden ore; they scarred her fair face, and tore from her bosom her 

 most available treasure, and bore it unthankful from her shores. Thus she 

 was ravaged of thousands upon thousands of dollars by those who had not 

 a thought of her improvement and development, and the wealth that, if 

 expended here, would have made her blossom as the rose, was borne away 

 to enrich and embellish homes in less congenial climes. This desire for 

 the attainment of sudden wealth, this gambling spirit so prevalent during 

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