152 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



fornia is at a great disadvantage as compared with her sister- 

 states east of the Rocky Mountains, in the proportion of land 

 fitted for growing a variety of crops. In the northern part of 

 the Mississippi valley, nearly every acre will produce all the 

 main articles of cultivation — fruits, maize, potatoes, and gar- 

 den vegetables, as well as wheat and oats. In this state, how- 

 ever, of the 40,000,000 tillable acres, at least 30,000,000 are so 

 dry, that they cannot, because of the want of moisture, and 

 the impossibihty of irrigation, be made to produce any crop 

 save small grain ; and of the remaining 10,000,000 acres, three- 

 fourths w^ill not yield fruits, maize, potatoes, pumpkim?, or gar- 

 den vegetables, without irrigation. 



These are undoubtedly very serious drawbacks to the agri- 

 culture of the state, but we have great advantages in many 

 other points. The climate in the valleys, for instance, is so 

 warm and the sky so clear through the Avinter, that vegetable 

 life upon moist ground is almost as active in January as in 

 July ; and our trees and shrubs have nearly tmce as much 

 time to grow and mature as in the free states of the East, 

 where frost reigns from October to May. It is a well-known 

 fact that California has produced larger specimens of garden 

 vegetables, more thrifty growth and rapid development of 

 fruit-trees, and larger crops of small grain to the acre, than 

 any state in the Union, and many persons have supposed our 

 soil to be richer. This supposition is erroneous, as I am satis- 

 fied ; the superiority of the Californian productions is owing to 

 the more favorable climate. I am not aware that any com- 

 parison of our soils has been made by chemical analysis with 

 those of Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio ; but the proba- 

 bility is, that the latter are more fertile. The loam is deeper ; 

 the vegetation has been gi*eater, and it has enriched the soil 

 by the accumulation of its decomposed remains through thou- 

 sands of years ; whereas in the valleys of California, the vege- 

 tation is comparatively scanty, and the air is too dry to permit 

 a decomposition of wood or grass to enrich the soil. The bot- 

 tom-lands of the Sacramento and San Joaquin are far inferior 



