AGRICULTURE, 153 



in depth, blackness, and fertility of loam, to the valleys of the 

 Miami, Wabash, and Illinois Rivers. 



§ 129. Agricultural Districts. — Let us now consider the dif- 

 ferent districts in the state suitable for agriculture. These dis- 

 tricts, as I have said before, compose only a small part of Califor- 

 nia, and have strongly-marked boundaries. They are nearly 

 all valley-land, shut in by mountains. The Great Utah Basin 

 has very little tillable land in the state ; there are small patches 

 of fertile soil, but too slight to deserve special mention. The 

 Colorado Basin is in about the same condition. It is possible 

 that a considerable tract of land will be rendered fit for tillage 

 by turning the Colorado into the low part of the desert ; but 

 this is a remote contingency, and we have no accurate infor- 

 mation about the character of the soil which it is proposed to 

 irrigate in this manner. In a few little valleys, however, just 

 at the eastern foot of the Coast Range, the soil is fertile, and 

 the climate so warm, that fruits ripen six weeks earlier than 

 on the western side. 



The largest tracts of tillable land in the Klamath Basin are 

 the Scott and Shasta valleys, each about thirty miles long and 

 four wide. They are elevated from three to four thousand 

 feet above the sea ; the winters are severe, and frosts common 

 in spring and autumn, and not rare in summer. Most of the 

 soil is a gravelly clay, with a rich, sandy loam, along the im- 

 mediate borders of the streams. Wheat, oats, apples, and. 

 potatoes, do well ; but maize, peaches, melons, tomatoes, and 

 sweet-potatoes, require a warmer climate. There is some level 

 land in the eastern part of the Klamath Basin, near the Kla- 

 math Lakes, but the soil is barren, and the vegetation like 

 that of a desert. Del Norte county, which may be said to 

 belong to the Klamath Basin, has 44,117 acres of land, of 

 which 15,240 are covered with redwood, '7,277 with spruce, 

 19,204 are prairie, 2,400 are sand-ridges, and 4,712 are in la- 

 goons. Most of the redwood land is level and fertile, but the 

 timber is dense almost beyond example, and could not be 

 cleared profitably, because all the redwood stumps throw out 



