No. 129. J 431 



I am about to present, to surmount obstacles, overcome difficul- 

 ties, and illustrate the great productive powers of the soil of our 

 State— a State whose agricultural capabilities, a far richer treas- 

 ure than her mineral wealth, are unsurpassed in any portion of 

 the earth, and whose variety of useful products are equalled only 

 by their unparallelled extent and adaptation to the wants of man. 

 In most of the others, a single excellence is characteristic and 

 predominant. The lumber of Maine, the granite of New-Hamp- 

 shire, the wool of Vermont, the manufactures of Massachusetts, 

 the agriculture of New-York, the coal and iron of Pennsylvania, 

 the grain and fruits of the Middle and Western States, the copper 

 of Michigan, the corn, tobacco and hemp of Virginia and Ken- 

 tucky, the cotton of Alabama and Georgia, the sugar of Louisiana, 

 the sugar, cotton and indigo of Texas, the turpentine of North 

 and the rice of South Carolina, constitute respectively their most 

 prominent and distinctive interests, and are the pride and glory 

 of their citizens. But there is scarcely one of these that cannot 

 be found or produced in our own State. In the natural produc- 

 tions of the earth, conducive to the sustenance of man, is our 

 State abundantly prolific. As we approach the centre of the 

 State, the banana, the orange, the lemon, the olive, the fig, the 

 plantain, the nectarine, the almond, the apricot, and the pome- 

 granate of the South, mingle in the same luxuriant gardens of Los 

 Angelos, with the peach, the pear, the cherry, the plum, the 

 quince and the apple of the North — the fruits of the oak and the 

 pine, of gigantic size and delicious taste, furnishing to man and 

 beast the richest and most nutritious food — the beautiful salmon 

 of the noble Sacramento, often weighing thirty, forty, and in 

 some instances sixty pounds, vieing with any other in fineness of 

 texture and richness of flavor, as well as in size — and one un- 

 common article of white sugar, the exudation of a species of pine 

 tree called the sugar-pine — the successive ranges of mountains, 

 whose extent is lost to view in the distance, waving with rich 

 harvests of oats, the spontaneous production of the soil — solid 

 trees of red-wood on the banks of the Trinity and Shasta rivers, 

 sixty-eight feet in circumference ; hollow ones whose cavity has 

 sheltered sixty men and twenty mules for the night ; pines crown- 

 ing the dizzy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, three hundred and 



