72 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



the owners of flouring mills in Ibis city, who have bought and manufac- 

 tured the wheat from Yolo County for 3'ears, we find they are of opinion 

 that the improvement in quality on an average is at least twenty-five 

 per cent. This is no small consideration when we consider that this 

 quality as well as quantity can, by irrigation, be kept up year after year 

 with almost as much certainty as seed time and harvest follow each 

 other. It is the opinion of the best judges that with an improvement at 

 the outlet of Clear Lake, from which Cache Creek is principally fed, the 

 creek can be made to furnish a sufficient quantity of water to irrigate in 

 the dryest of seasons the whole one hundred thousand acres the ditches 

 projected are designed to flood. If such be the case, then that area of 

 land in a year like eighteen hundred and sixty-four, when it would yield 

 nothing without water, could be made to produce the enormous quantity 

 of four'million bushels, and in an average of seasons the increased ])ro- 

 duct from these facilities would be three million bushels, or more than 

 one fourth what the entire State produced of wheat in eighteen hundred 

 and sixt}', as stated by the national census. Add to these considerations 

 the fact Uiat with a good system of irrigation every farmer on lands like 

 those under consideration can produce every variety of vegetables and 

 fruits in great abundance, while without it none can be depended on, 

 and consequently we may now ride hundreds of miles througii the grain 

 farming sections of our State without seeing a single vegetable garden, 

 and we can form some idea of the changes that the general adoption of 

 such systems would produce in the appearance, comforts, and prosperity 

 of our agricultural communities. 



Again : the lands in the neighborhood of these ditches are held at 

 fifty per cent higher than the}- were two years ago, and farms that could 

 then be had fortlie taking, are now held at from two thousand to three 

 thousand dollars. Farmers in those sections are coming to regard their 

 homes as of some value, and to realize that a California farmer may yet 

 become, as in other countries, an independent and prosperous man, made 

 happy by the reflection that he has about him in great abundance, for 

 himself and family, the necessaries and luxuries of life — all the fruits of 

 his own industry, produced on soil of which he has the undisputed 

 ownership. 



Water is the great desideratum. While Providence has not seen fit to 

 provide for its general and necessary perennial distribution over Cali- 

 fornia by the same means He uses in most other countries — the distilla- 

 tion from the cloud.s — yet He has so located and formed this country 

 that we may not only have it when and where we want it, but He has 

 placed it, in the greatest abundance, so completely within our reach and 

 control that we ma}' use it to our very best advantage, and at the same 

 time we are not liable, as in other countries, to damage from its coming 

 ujion us in the seasons of our harvests. 



What other country of equal dimensions in the world is so admirably 

 spread out, levelled and graded with the proper slopes for irrigation, as 

 our great inland valley, bounded by the Coast Hange on the one side 

 and \he Sierra Mevadas on the other, and extending from Fort Heading 

 on the north to Kern Paver on the south ? There is scarcely a foot of 

 this great valle}', embracing at least twenty millions of acres of land as 

 rich as the valley of the Nile, but can be abundantl}' irrigated by the 

 watei's of the Saci-amento, taken out high up and conducted in canals 

 down along the foot hills on either side, and from the waters of the 

 Featlier, Yuba, American, San Joaquin, and thousands of lesser streams, 

 as they flow from the mountains on the east and west, and find their 



