SEVENTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 621 



all the care bestowed upon it. The mirier is finding in some sections of our 

 county rich deposits of coal, oil, marble, and precious metals. It is gen- 

 erally believed that more thorough and general prospecting will greatly 

 increase this source of wealth. In climate we are literally unsurpassed. 

 We have no hard winters or hot summers. Our gardens thrive and our 

 flowers bloom all the year. A good tent or a board hut is ample shelter 

 from our worst storms. An hour's drive from the valley into the shelter of 

 the foothills, or up the mountain side, gives a more complete change of cli- 

 mate than a day's travel in the Eastern States. Fever and ague cannot 

 live among us. We laugh at malaria. If rheumatism or dyspepsia ever 

 threaten us we bathe in and drink from our unexcelled hot mineral springs 

 and forget our ills. Our natural scenery is both pleasing and varied. In 

 its diversity of mountain, hill, valley, and canon, it cannot fail in present- 

 ing homelike reminders to comers from all quarters. Nature has certainly 

 dealt us her bounties with a lavish hand, and God has made here one of 

 earth's richest, choicest dwelling places. In all the essentials of thrifty, 

 prosperous, comfortable existence we have no lack in our natural resources 

 and attractions. Our foundation is the very best. 



2. The next essential of a good country is that it be in close connection 

 with the outside world. 



Time was when the hunter and the squatter were the pioneers. They 

 were the principal agents in opening up a new country. The main appli- 

 ances of civilization were expected to follow in their wake. All this has 

 changed. We live too fast for it now. The locomotive, and the printing 

 press, with the school, the church, and the town, are our pioneers. In proof 

 of this assertion notice the settlement of the southern part of this county 

 since the extension of the railroad from Soled ad to Templeton. True, it 

 was settled before. But the advent of the locomotive was the signal for 

 the readjustment of settlement that has almost amounted to an entire 

 change in this respect. New towns sprung up as by magic all along the 

 railroad line. Stores, shops, churches, schools came with the towns. Peo- 

 ple flocked in and filled up the country, occupying Government land and 

 buying homes, until that section is peopled and improved as never before. 

 This is but a very small specimen of what is being done all over the great 

 West to-day. You have noticed that the multiplication of transcontinental 

 railroads has brought the boom times to Southern California. No sooner 

 could people reach that favored section with ease and cheapness than its 

 natural attractions brought them by the tens of thousands. Here has 

 been one of the greatest drawbacks to the proper settlement of our section. 

 We have lived in a corner. We have been off the lines of travel mostly 

 used by strangers. We have not advertised ourselves extensively. As a 

 result, comparatively few home-seekers have ever found us. The tourist 

 has missed us. But now that our railroad is having its last link forged 

 that is to make it one of the great transcontinental chains, we may hope 

 for better things. The home-seeker and the tourist will no longer miss us. 

 The great bulk of the travel to the far-famed " Cape May of the Pacific " 

 must pass through our valley. Let its fair acres be offered for homes, in 

 quantities to suit, and on reasonable terms, and our tenantry system will 

 soon be a thing of the past. The redwood shanty and the tumble-down 

 barn, the treeless, yardless, cheerless renters quarters, so often met with 

 now, will give place to such homes as in most places already adorn the 

 premises of our ranch owners. When I spend a week or two among the 

 colonies in Fresno County, and see what irrigation and small home hold- 

 ings can do for a country, I grow more than ever impatient for some change 

 of conditions that will advance our material interest, not simply to par, 



