STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 327 



Francisco or Stockton, and there will be no need of a feverish White 

 Pine excitement to fill it with people and make it resound with the 

 cheerful toil of thousands of farmers. They in turn would load that 

 road with countless tons of wheat. Commerce would freight her ships 

 with it. Merchants would barter for it. Bankers would make advances 

 upon it. Labor would be demanded at every stage of its growth and 

 its handling; and thus it would contribute in some degree to make the 

 State and the nation broader and stronger in their foundation and their 

 upbuilding. 



IRRIGATION. 



Next to railroads we want canals for irrigation, but constructed with 

 sufficient depth to make them navigable. We may say in general terms 

 of the seasons of California, that they are two, one of copious moisture, 

 commencing on the first of November and closing on the first of May; 

 the other is rainless and extends from the first of May to the first of 

 November. Could we moisten the earth during these last six months, 

 the productiveness of the State would be absolutely without limit. 

 Many rich mines have been opened in California, and their harvest of 

 gold, by lubricating the machinery of manufacturing and commercial 

 industry, has enriched the world. But no country has profited by it so 

 little as the State which produced it. There yet remains one mine, 

 however, richer than Ophir, exhaustless as the sea, the treasures of which 

 are in store lor the people of California whenever they choose to appro- 

 priate them. I mean the melting snow of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 

 which the suns of summer send down in fertilizing streams upon the 

 arid plains. We have but to utilize them to find them a source of 

 boundless wealth The practice of irrigation is coeval with history. It 

 has existed in every country, though much less in the United States 

 than elsewhere. It was one of the earliest arts practiced by man. The 

 scientific press of England, in view of the late droughts there, is telling 

 the people that, even under the conditions of an English climate, which 

 is one of extreme moisture, the most profitable use of the surplus water 

 in their running streams would be to apply it to irrigation. Italy, with 

 a climate as moist as that of the Middle States of the Union, with its 

 annual rainfall, as well distributed through the summer and winter 

 months, has applied the drainage of the Alps and the Appenines to the 

 irrigation of a million of acres, and has developed there a new agricul- 

 ture to such an extent, that a hundred millions of dollars would not 

 purchase the surrender of its benefits. It is a fact, too, that the rental as 

 well as the product of the irrigated lands exceeds that of the dry culture, 

 and in some places amounts to a very large sum per acre. Thus far I 

 have spoken of countries which I have seen. Old canals for irrigation, 

 repaired and enlarged by the English in India, and new ones built by 

 them for irrigation, combined with navigation, are numerous, and are 

 measured by thousands of miles. One of them, a work purely English 

 in design and execution, and of modern date, the great canal of the 

 Ganges, with its branches navigable by steamers through a thousand 

 miles, irrigates more than a million and a half of acres. The officers of 

 the East Indian service are pressing upon English capitalists the further 

 extension of the canals, not only as important to the commercial pros- 

 perity of the country, but as a chance for profitable investment. Along 

 the foot of the Cordilleras, in the rainless western slope of South 

 America, lands have been kept moist by irrigation for more than a 

 hundred years. In Spain English capital is building the. canal of 



