308 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



are found at snow-capped Mount Shasta, 325 miles 

 away and it receives the tumultuous waters of 

 several smaller rivers which take their rise in the 

 higher Sierras. All these rivers coming down 

 from the north and northeast furnish abundant 

 water in springtime often too abundant and 

 have played an important part in soil formation. 

 They still play a great part in crop production and 

 in some places have to be restrained by levees. 

 Much of this diking has been made necessary 

 by extensive hydraulic and dredger mining on the 

 upper reaches of the rivers which tend to fill the 

 riverbeds with slickings. When the dikes break 

 and the river overflows the slickings may be de- 

 posited on farmlands and do great damage even 

 to the extent of throwing the land wholly out of 

 cultivation. 



Formerly grain raising was the almost universal 

 occupation of the ranchers but now orchards, vine- 

 yards and alfalfa largely occupy the land once de- 

 voted to wheat production. In 1900 twenty-eight 

 and a half millions of bushels of wheat were raised 

 in California but in 1913 the production was only 

 a little over 4,000,000. Most of the cereals are 

 raised without irrigation and barley is still raised 

 in large quantities. In 1913 over 33,000,000 



