AGKICULTURE. 155 



10,000 acres each ; and American valley, 5,000. In all of tliera 

 the soil is very sandy, but not barren. They are from three to 

 five thousand feet above the sea ; all shut in by high moun- 

 tains; and all containing a considerable portion of swampy 

 land. 



The low land of the Sacramento Basin comprises 20,000 

 square miles — about 3,000,000 acres. The Sacramento valley 

 has several benches. The lowest bench is about twenty feet 

 above the low-water mark of the river, and has a soil of sandy 

 loam, richer immediately along the stream than farther off. 

 The next bench, very irregular in height and width, has a soil 

 of red, gravelly clay, which extends back to the mountains. 

 In some places this clay becomes very soft in wet seasons — so 

 soft, that weak cattle may mire down in it and be unable to 

 extricate themselves. I knew a case where a team of weak 

 oxen, exhausted by hard driving and scanty food, sank down 

 in a wet gravel-ridge, so that only their heads and a little of 

 their necks and shoulders appeared above-ground ; and passing 

 the place some months later, when the ground had become as 

 hard as clay and gravel ever are, I saw the six bare skulls of 

 the oxen resting with their chins on the earth where they had 

 sunk down, and behind them were the projecting spines of the 

 back-bone, with the yokes still on the necks of each pair of 

 oxen. This gravel is seldom cultivated at present, but in many 

 places it will produce good crops of barley. It forms at least 

 one-half of the Sacramento valley. Yery little of it can be irri- 

 gated ; and the general belief is, that no corn, potatoes, garden 

 vegetables, fruit, or grapes, can be grown on it without irriga- 

 tion. The sandy loam produces large crops of wheat, barley, 

 and oats, without irrigation. Fruit-trees and grape-vines thrive 

 without it after they grow to be tt.ree or four years old, but 

 in most places require it till they have taken a good start. 

 Garden vegetables cannot be grown witliout irrigation, unless 

 planted very early, and of such kinds a,s ripen before July. In 

 the level valley there are no springs, nor are there any artesian 

 wells ; so the onlv method of gettino: water is by pumping it 



