SEVENTEENTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 575 



enrichingthe State,ifno1 ourselves. The world is full of agricultural land, 

 while gold mining lauds are scarce, and there arc none in the world so valua- 

 ble as these which would be condemned to inactivity." By such consider- 

 ations, and others, the miners were influenced to believe thai they had 

 both right and expediency on their side, and that the Courts must recognize 

 it. but the miners never did feel a class hostility to the valleys, or any- 

 thing but decent regret that any injuries should result to the farmers. 



The farmers' side of the question is. that hydraulic miners cast masses 

 of earth into the streams, which How with the current, and covers up their 

 fields, destroys their crops, and the present fertility of the soil; and they 

 believe they have a right, on just legal principles, to have an agency 

 arrested which causes them such loss. They also appeal to general inter- 

 ests to gain the ear of the State, and say that, not only is a broad fringe 

 of lands along the streams victimized by "slickens,' but the navigable 

 waters of the State are being filled up; the bed of the Sacramento River 

 is being raised, and San Francisco Bay will in time sutler. These are 

 respectable premises for their complaints, and must be considered in judg- 

 ing the situation. The Courts take them into consideration in arriving at 

 their conclusions, and find them true. 



The hydraulic miner has undoubtedly contributed to these evils. It 

 would be disingenuous to deny it, and nothing would be gained by the 

 denial. Yet it will not do to overlook other obvious causes, certainly dele- 

 terious in their effects. The whole Sacramento Valley is an evidence, as 

 are all valleys, of the corrosive power of water acting on mountain ranges, 

 and every harbor in the world, every place of deposit of running waters, 

 from the mouth of the Nile to the bar of the Columbia, or the St. John, tes- 

 tifies clearly to the same effect. The loam — the debris from centuries of 

 washings of Winter storms, is a thousand yards deep in the Sacramento 

 Valleys. These great operations would have gone on forever, or until the 

 mountains and plains were one, had man never seen this State. As the 

 plains fill, the beds of rivers rise. The process has been greatly accelerated 

 by an hundred other causes besides mining. Every acre of land plowed in 

 the mountain valleys, every road built, every cellar or posthole dug, loosens 

 the soil, ready to be run into the streams and load them with slickens. 

 The cutting of timber from the high Sierras has probably done more mis- 

 chief, and will continue to do so, than any other agency. The ground on 

 the steep mountains being once bared of trees, every depression becomes in 

 Winter a water-course; the whole volume of water rushes at once to the 

 plains, carrying earth, pebbles, and sand in its course. Forests retard the 

 How of water. The stems of trees and underwood, the trunks, stumps, and 

 roots of fallen trees, and the numerous inequalities of ground observed in 

 all forests, all act as dams to water. Where the earth is denuded of trees 

 the sun and frost pulverize the earth and rocks, and prepare them to be 

 swept down into the lowlands. George P. Marsh, in his "Earth as Modi- 

 fied by Human Action," after describing the great fertility of the territory 

 of the Roman Empire, says: 



If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I am speaking, 

 with the descriptions that ancient historians and geographers have given of their fertility 

 and general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one half 

 of their whole extent — not including the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and 

 variety of their spontaneous products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their 

 inhabitants, is either deserted by civilized man, and surrendered to hopeless desolation, 

 or at least greatly reduced in productiveness and population. Vast forests have disap- 

 peared from mountain spurs and ridges, the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the 

 trees, by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the Alpine pastures, which 

 skirted and indented the woods, and the mold of the upland fields, are washed away. 



