PIONEER VEGETABLE GROWING 11 



higher horticultural skill, as will be described presently, but it was 

 upon the achievements of the vegetable growers at the very begin- 

 ning of the American occupation that California's horticultural rep- 

 utation was established. 



Hozv the Pioneers Prospered by Vegetable Growing. It would 

 be easy to collect quite a volume of interesting instances of how 

 success was attained in the early days, but a single experience must 

 suffice. It illustrates both the resources of the pioneers and the 

 country which they found. G. G. Briggs left New York state in 

 April 1849, and arrived in California in October of the same year, 

 driving an ox team and walking most of the way. He says : 



When I arrived in California I saw at once that there were other means 

 of accumulating gold besides digging it from the mines; that miners and 

 all classes would need turnips and cabbage and other products of the soil; 

 that even then many were suffering with scurvy and other diseases for the 

 want of fresh vegetable food. The large crops of native grapes on the banks 

 of the Sacramento were proof of the productive capacity of the California 

 soil and climate. Reaching Sacramento, our party of four had no money 

 and no property but our wagon and three yoke of oxen. I could find no 

 work whatever. I got trusted by a storekeeper for a sack of walnuts and 

 sold them to passers by the teacupful and in five days cleared fifty dollars. 

 We sold our oxen and with my part of the money I went to San Francisco 

 to buy garden seeds with which to start vegetable growing on a piece of 

 land I had previously seen in the bottom of the Yuba river, near the present 

 site of Marysville. As it was too early in the season to plant, I bought a 

 whale-boat and began freighting goods; and by spring I had accumulated 

 about three thousand dollars. The last load freighted by me included a ton 

 of potatoes, which cost me forty cents a pound. My seeds and potatoes 

 were planted in March, 1851, and everything was doing well until cut to 

 the ground by frost on April 19. My potatoes, however, came up again and 

 made a fair crop. I was not to be cheated out of my vegetable crop, and 

 started out again to buy seeds, but could find none, either in Sacramento or 

 in San Francisco. Returning to Sacramento, I chanced upon some water- 

 melon seeds on the boat, and bought the lot for twenty dollars. With these 

 I planted five acres, and cleaned up about five thousand dollars for one sum- 

 mer's work. The next year I planted about twenty-six acres of watermelons, 

 and in the fall I found I had twenty thousand dollars for my summer's 

 work. 3 



With the money Mr. Briggs returned to New York for his fam- 

 ily and brought also, on his return, some fruit trees, and laid the 

 foundation of his subsequent brilliant record as a pioneer fruit 



8 Condensed from narrative of G. G. Briggs, in Rep. State Ag'l Soc. 1881. 

 Another account (Rep. 1858) says this watermelon crop was grown by Mr. 

 Briggs with the aid of two men. 



