State AgkiculturaIi Society. 345 



ramento boats stop every day on their up and down trips. Indeed, they 

 present every indication of a wide awake and prosperous community. 

 Lands there, brought under cultivation, are worth and being sold, when 

 sold at all, for from fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars per acre. 



OTHER ISLANDS. 



In addition to those above named, we may mention Bouldin, Venice, and 

 Maudeville Islands as in progress of reclamation, each containing from 

 five to em-ht thousand acres of land, the soil of which is very similar to 

 that of Twitchell and Sherman. 



ROBERTS AND UNION ISLANDS. 



At a point some twelve miles nearly south of the City of Stockton, 

 where the San Joaquin .River divides, one branch called the San Joaquin 

 proper, runs nearly north to within a few miles from Stockton, then 

 bears westerly in a very crooked line to a point at which the Town of 

 Venice was founded and built on paper; the other branch, called West 

 Channel, drops off to the southwest, and finally sweeps back and rejoins 

 the main river about three miles below Venice. The greatest distance 

 between the two rivers is about eighteen miles. The oval-shaped piece 

 of land thus surrounded by these two channels is traversed, a little south 

 of the center, by another river called the Middle Channel, thus forming 

 the two large islands known as lloberts and Union Islands — the former 

 contains sixty thousand acres, and the hitter from forty-five thousand to 

 fifty thousand, nearly all of which belongs to the Eeclamation Com- 

 pany, and is claimed by them to be susceptible of easy and perfect recla- 

 mation, and when so reclaimed to be among the most valuable of their 

 swamp land possessions. 



DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS. 



There is a striking difference between the topography of the Sacra- 

 mento islands, or those washed by the waters of the Sacramento and the 

 sloughs making out of it, and those washed by the San Joaquin and its 

 branches or sloughs. The banks or edges of the former are considerably 

 higher above low water mark than those of the latter, and are all stud- 

 ded with bushes — mostly willow; and with sycamore trees, from twenty 

 to fifty feet high, while the centers of the islands are entirely desolate 

 of shrubs and trees, being covered by a very tall and heavy growth of 

 tule. The banks of the San Joaquin islands, on the contrary, appear to 

 be no higher than the centers, and are almost uniformly destitute of 

 bushes and have no trees of any size, while the centers of the islands 

 are dotted with bunches of willow, and the tules are thinner and shorter — 

 being mixed with a much greater quantity of coarse grass of different 

 kinds, including now and then patches of California clover. Again, the 

 soil of the Sacramento islands is to a great extent clay and a late deposit 

 of fine yellow sediment, underlying which is a strata of almost pure 

 decomposed vegetable matter. On the other hand, the surface soil of the 

 San Joaquin islands has scarcely any other material in its composition 

 than this decomposed vegetable matter. 



44 



