STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 335 



all directions like radii from a common centre. I see the multitudes of 

 passengers hastening to the depots at all the hours of departure. I hear 

 the bell strike, the clatter of merchandise, the cry of all aboard. Afar 

 in the distance there is a glimpse of lazy, winding canals, clothing vast 

 plains with verdure — equally in periods of greatest drought and most 

 copious moisture — making their owners independent of rains, defiant of 

 seasons. Through the Golden Gate are coming ships, laden from every 

 land under the sun, while proud ships, outward bound, are tossing impa- 

 tiently upon the tide, and eager to get free. At the centre of all this 

 enterprise, this greatness, this grand banquet of traffic, sits San Fran- 

 cisco, looking from her throne of hills overhalf a continent — arbitress of 

 a greater commerce than Thebes or Carthage, Babylon or T}~re. 



TIIE SACRAMENTO VALLEY. 



Let us survey for a moment the ground where we stand. We are 

 assembled in the midst of the Upper Sacramento Valley, at a spot 

 which the genius of American enterprise dedicated to civilization only 

 nine years ago. Yonder in the valley comes the Sacramento Biver, 

 pouring down from gold bearing mountains, and carrying in its current 

 the melted snows of the Sierra Nevada. Far through the trees it winds 

 and flows. It is the child of the Sierras, and reflects their grandeur in 

 its course. Still and deep it rolls on, bearing many a ship and goodly 

 steamer upon its bosom and constituting the charm of this landscape. On 

 its left bank stands the Capital of the State, whose people built a barrier 

 against its current and conquered the power of its floods To me there 

 are few objects in nature more truly sublime than a valley spread out 

 by an Omnipotent hand, from foot-hills to foot-hills, on such a vast scale 

 as this. When dry and parched, no desert is more dreary. When unin- 

 habited, no solitude is more profound and imposing. But when the 

 abodes of man dot its surface, when the plow has furrowed it, when 

 greenness clothes it as with a garment, or when its fields are loaded with 

 harvest stores, then it is one of the loveliest objects that gladdens the 

 eye of man, and its riches are but a type of the inexhaustible riches of 

 the Creator. But the great valley yet waits for the railroad and the 

 canal. Wherever such a sj'stem of internal improvements as I have 

 sketched shall be carried out, its teeming population will be counted by 

 millions. San Francisco will be greater than ancient Thebes was. Sacra- 

 mento will be greater than San Francisco now is, and Vallejo will be 

 the second city west of the Bocky Mountains. Look again at the valley 

 as it lies spread out around us. forty miles in width from side to side. 

 There are principalities in Germany where civil government is main- 

 tained, and all the pomp of a court kept up, on a much smaller extent of 

 territory than the Sacramento Valle} 7 . The inhabitants of New England 

 can, with difficulty, conceive of a valley forty miles wide. The dwellers 

 by the Mohawji and the Shenandoah can have just as little comprehen- 

 sion of it. The Valleys of the Bhine andtheBhone are insignificant in 

 point of territory when compared with it. And we have just as little 

 idea of the beautiful cultivation of their valleys as they have of the pro- 

 digious extent of ours. Can we not learn a lesson each from the other ? 

 Our lesson is that the most magnificent natural advantages are nothing 

 unless we improve them. Their lesson is, not to remain clinging to the 

 scanty acres of Europe, but to take up their march for the New World. 



