THROUGH THE CALIFORNIA RAISIN DISTRICTS. 



THROUGH SAN JOAQUIN VAIXEY TO FRESNO. 



We are on our way up the valley. The train left San Francisco 

 in the morning. We have crossed the bay and rounded the Contra 

 Costa Mountains, and Mount Diablo, with its majestic twin peaks, 

 lies already behind us. We have just crossed the San Joaquin 

 river not far from its mouth; the west side of the valley is on our 

 right; on the left looms up the Sierra Nevada, far away it is true, but 

 grand and imposing, gradually decreasing, as it were, towards the 

 south, finally to disappear among the clouds at the farther end of the 

 valley. It is in the middle of August; the day is warm, but there has 

 been a shower in the mountains, as is usual at this season of the year, 

 a sprinkling of rain has purified the atmosphere in the foothills, 

 which stand out clear and bright, a contrast to the dusty road in the 

 center of the valley, over which the smoking train carries us at a 

 rapid speed. On both sides of us stretch apparently endless plains, 

 thirty miles wide, to the Coast Range on one side, to the Sierra 

 Nevada on the other, plains dry and yellow, parched in the brilliant 

 sun, shaded by no clouds, but cooled by a steady breeze from the 

 northwest following us up the valley. Up, we say, but it is hardly 

 any more up than down, the ascent being about one foot to the mile ; it 

 is rather a journey over one of the most level plains on the continent, but 

 still the popular usage insists upon saying " up the valley.' ' Acres and 

 acres of already harvested grainfields are seen on both sides, crossed 

 by roads at right angles; here and there are stacks of grain which 

 have not yet been threshed, or heaps of straw, where the threshing 

 engine has done its work; on almost every section of land we see a 

 farmhouse and barn, a few gum-trees or cottonwoods, and many a 

 windmill and elevated tank informs us where the farmer gets his water 

 for his house and his scanty trees. All this we see under a blazing sun 

 and a quivering air. 



This is the great San Joaquin valley, the fertile center of California. 

 Of the much spoken of irrigation of California, we see almost nothing; 

 the land is dry and thirsty, the soil is loose, and the engine forces the 

 dust in a cloud before us. Nothing green is seen anywhere except a 

 few scattered trees far, far apart. Here and there we pass a little 

 town with wooden houses and dusty streets, with wooden churches 

 whose spires do not pierce the sky. We cross many streams, several of 

 which are dry, or have sluggish waters, while some wind their way 

 down the valley between banks covered with willows and cotton- 

 woods. Yet there is something grand in this immense stretch of 

 open, level country, with its frame of snowy mountains, with its fer-j, 

 tile fields waiting for the winter's rain or irrigating ditch to produce 

 abundantly of almost anything that can be grown in any temperate 



