STATE AORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 329 



hundred and seventy-five dollars per annum for the flow of one cubic 

 foot per second. The constant flow of this quantity per second is there 

 estimated to irrigate one hundred and fifty-five acres. The price of the 

 water upon entering the canal, which is the price paid to the sovereign, 

 is about twelve dollars per acre per annum; and the cost paid to the 

 canal for delivery of the water upon the land is about twelve dollars 

 more. 



There is no country in which irrigation can be more easily applied, 

 nor, if we except India, upon so grand a scale as in California. A sur- 

 vey already made demonstates the practicability of watering more 

 than three quarters of a million of acres on the right bank of the 

 Sacramento River, by a canal issuing from that stream near Red Bluff, 

 leading along the outward edge of the valley, and having its outlet at 

 Suisun, and it is probable that the drainage of the Coast Range of moun- 

 tains would swell the irrigating capacity of that canal to one million of 

 acres. Large as this area is, a still larger area can be irrigated from col- 

 lecting in a canal the streams heading in the Sierras, and flowing into 

 the wide plain on the left bank of the Sacramento, and the vast basins of 

 the San Joaquin and Tulare. The last named could be gathered into a 

 deep and navigable canal, having its head in Kern River and Tulare Lake, 

 and its outlet in or near the Bay of San Francisco; and the first named 

 waters would need a canal pointing westward. The areas here named, 

 if subjected to an irrigation like that of Italy and parts of India, with its 

 superior advantages of climate and fertility, would yield to the com- 

 merce of this State a contribution of almost incalculable value. 



SALT LAKE VALLEY. 



When the traveller halts in the streets of Salt Lake City, as I did on 

 the nineteenth of June, eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, he finds that 

 it is laid out into one hundred and eighty blocks, often acres each, with 

 avenues between them all, of one hundred and thirtj 7 feet in width. He 

 has read the facts of its climate, and knows that there is not rain fall 

 enough in Utah to ripen any of the crops on which man depends for 

 subsistence. He observes, however, that the gardens blossom, and fill 

 the air with fragrance; that vegetation is thrifty and green; that the 

 orchards are loaded with fruit ; and around the city, and stretching off 

 in the distance far away, are fields of grain and barns filled with 

 plenty. He sees that the streets are lined with rows of trees, in which 

 choirs of birds appear to assemble to sing their songs. He listens, and 

 discovers that there is mingled with the music of the birds the sound 

 of rippling water. He now perceives that there is a crystal stream 

 coursing its way through every street, and making, by outlets, the cir- 

 cuit of even garden. The bloom and fragrance there are no longer a 

 mystery. On returning from the city by the stage coach, twenty-eight 

 miles, to the railroad, he crosses more than fifty streams of running 

 water, some of which have made the circuit of w T heat fields in artificial 

 conduits, and are hurrying their surplus waters down the valley to the 

 Great Salt Lake, which lies at a little distance below, and in plain 

 sight of the city. He lifts up his eyes and sees, far in the distance, 

 where the Almighty has bended the noble range of Wasatch Mountains, 

 like a bow, round the two sides of the valley in which the hive-like city 

 and sweet fields lie embosomed. Though it is midsummer, the snows 



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