State Agricultural Society. 81 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, SEPTEMBER SIX- 

 TEENTH, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY. 



By Hon. A. A. SAKGENT. 



Mr. President, Ladles and Gentlemen : 



I congratulate you upon this annual gathering, this magnificent dis- 

 play, these evidences of prosperity of your society and of the State. 

 No one who has lived in California for years past, with but brief periods 

 of absence, can appreciate the effect produced upon the eastern visitor 

 or upon the Californian who has passed a year or more away, by first 

 impressions, or fresh ones, of our Slate. Whatever is lovely in climate, 

 magnificent in scenery, beautiful in flower, or exuberant in fruit, how- 

 ever familiar to the constant resident, to the visitor or returned wanderer 

 is novel and enchanting. A few weeks ago I passed through nearly every 

 State of the Atlantic seaboard, and thence westwardly from ocean to 

 ocean. Through all the region which 1 traversed there was dust and 

 drought, cloudless skies and suffering earth. East of the Sierras the 

 crops were burnl up, (he grass wilted by the wayside, and men looked 

 up to the unpitying heavens and Ion:;'*' I for the rains so untimely with- 

 held. It may be that such a spectacle prepares for a more full appreci- 

 ation of the advantages and excellences of this Stale. The traveler 

 arriving here finds first the evergreens of the Sierra crowning with life 

 the granite peaks and doubly refreshing after the wide spaces he lias 

 traversed of sage ami desert. In these broad valleys in midsummer he 

 finds the dust and drought that accompanied a blasted harvest in the 

 east, but not here the sign of destruction. The golden harvest is gath- 

 ered in, and the luscious fruits of Autumn astonish by their profusion 

 and perfection. He left sultry days, where exposure to the sun might 

 bring paralyzed imbecility or swift death, succeeded by steamy nights 

 in which unrest turns heavily after the labors of the day. and gains no 

 refreshment. Here he finds certainly an ardent mid-day sun that may 

 kiss eagerly but not treacherously, and refreshing nights that repair the 

 toils of the day by sweetest sleep. If he is an agriculturist he hears 

 with astonishment of the yield per acre of cereals — stories that revive 

 traditions of the Genessce, but are nowhere now paralleled. He may 

 hear of partial failure of crops, but so broad is the State that universal 

 failure never occurs. From foothill to valley, wherever he looks, he 



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