206 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



the Goleta Ranch, in Santa Barbara County, a flat fills with 

 water during storms and dries up in clear weather, leaving a 

 bed of salt that has supplied a large area of country for many 

 years. 



In some of the salt flats along the eastern base of the Sierra 

 Nevada, salt has been obtained for years by evaporating 

 water drawn from pits or wells only two or three feet deep. 



The salt-makers, while digging their pits, found large crys- 

 tals, which they tasted and threw away because they were 

 not good salt. Assays prove that they are borax, and many 

 of these flats, which were not worth $1.25 per acre for the 

 brine, have now been bought up. It is singular that the 

 brine in these flats should be nearly free from borax, and that 

 the crystals in the stratum in which the brine is found are 

 nearly free from salt. The surface of the salt and borax flats 

 is usually covered with slum or dry mud, about a foot thick ; 

 and beneath that is a layer of earth and sand, mixed with the 

 borax crystals, from an inch to two feet thick. So far, only one 

 stratum of borax has been found, but others could perhaps be 

 discovered by deep digging. The borax is worth twenty 

 times as much per ton as ordinary salt. 



In Southern California, near the line of Nevada, there is a 

 deposit of rock salt in large rectangular and transparent crys- 

 tals, and it is supposed that by careful search other similar de- 

 posits might be found. Some of this salt is quarried now, and 

 hauled away by people in the vicinity. 



147. Beet Sugar. The manufacture of beet sugar was 

 commenced in 1870, when 500,000 pounds were manufactured 

 from that year's crop; the beets of 1871 supplied 850,000 

 pounds; those of 1872, 1,300,000 pounds, and those of 1873, 

 1,500,000 pounds. There are two factories, one at Santa 

 Cruz, the other at Sacramento. The average yield of beets is 

 fifteen tons to the acre ; the average yield of sugar, eight per 

 cent., or 2,400 pounds of sugar to the acre. It has been found 

 that in our climate the beet can be kept with much less ex- 



