THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AT LOS BANGS 



On the afternoon of May 22, 1903, when, with Louis 

 Fuertes and H. Ward, as guide, I left Oakland for Los 

 Banes, great billowy cataracts of fog were pouring over the 

 hills about Tamalpais ; but within an hour we found a dif- 

 ferent climate. In place of the damp, raw air of the coast, 

 the atmosphere was clear and dry. Instead of the densely 

 wooded mountains north of the Golden Gate we were short- 

 ly passing over level plains, through seemingly endless 

 fields of wheat. Such sudden and marked changes are 

 frequent in California. 



At ten o 'clock that night we reached the village of Los 

 Banos, The surrounding country is comparatively arid 

 and large tracts have been irrigated to grow alfalfa and, 

 particularly, to create grazing for the cattle of the Miller 

 and Lux Company. 



In irrigating for grazing, the waters of the San Joaquin 

 river are used literally to flood vast areas, and the desert is 

 soon transformed into a series of creeks, ponds and 

 marshes. The desert plants are replaced by Sagittaria and 

 Ranunculus, tules (Scirpus) and cat-tails, (Typha), and the 

 desert birds by a remarkable assemblage of water birds 

 whose local distribution is governed by the presence or 

 absence of water. On reaching Los Banos, our inquiry, 

 therefore, was not for birds but for water, and we directed 

 our steps, or to be exact, those of our horses, toward that 

 portion of the ranch which we learned was then being irri- 

 gated. 



Driving over a levee, which extended as far as the eye 

 could see, we observed that the old and the new bird life was 

 separated only by the width of the dike. On the left was a 

 parched and sterile plain, with Horned Larks and Burrow- 

 ing Owls ; the home also, of jack rabbits, coyotes, and rattle- 



