THE TRUTH ABOUT CALIFORNIA 



who will como when the population of California begins 

 to approximate that of France ? It lies principally in 

 four great and distinct bodies, which may be named, in 

 the order of their importance, as follows : the Sacra- 

 mento Valley, stretching north from the Bay of San 

 Francisco to the feet of snowy Shasta ; the San Joaquin 

 Valley, reaching south from the great bay to the place 

 where the two mountain - ranges meet at the pass of 

 Tehachapi; the intermountain valleys on the eastern 

 slope of the Sierra, extending over the boundary into 

 Nevada; and the Colorado Desert, in the extreme south- 

 eastern part of the State, on the borders of Mexico. 



The first of these, the valley of the Sacramento, re- 

 ceived an addition of only two thousand to its rural pop- 

 ulation, out of a total of nearly ninety-seven thousand 

 for the State, between 1880 and 1890. The fault lay 

 neither with the soil nor the climate, which are equal to 

 those of any part of California, but with economic con- 

 ditions. The country is held in vast estates, principally 

 devoted to the cultivation of grain, which has been a 

 losing industry for several years. Where horticulture 

 has been adopted it has frequently been done upon a 

 great scale. The vast orchards and vine} T ards of Mrs. 

 Stanford, of General Bid well, and of A. T. Hatch are 

 striking instances of this tendency. When General N." 

 P. Chipman, himself a distinguished resident of the 

 Sacramento Valley, called attention to the startling rev- 

 elations contained in the census figures, the matter waa 

 widely discussed, but with little result. The public 

 spirit which has given the southern counties their splen- 

 did place in the life of the Pacific coast is distinctly 

 lacking in the north. The truth is that it cannot be 



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