PIONEER VEGETABLES 11 



immensity of the specimens and of the crop, wonderful to 

 the grower and incredible to the distant hearer, was 

 simply the exponent of the capacity of a virgin soil, in 

 which fertility had been accumulating for ages, and the 

 forcing power of a climate wholly new to Americans. In 

 later years California has surpassed even these early stan- 

 dards through the employment of 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 horti- 

 cultural reputation was established. 



How 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 dis- 

 eases 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 $50. We sold our 

 oxen and with my part of the money I went to San Fran- 

 cisco 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 Marys- 



