AGRICULTURE. 153 
in depth, blackness, and fertility of loam, to the valleys of the 
Miami, Wabash, and Dlinois Rivers. 
§ 129. Agricultural Districts—Let us now consider the dif- 
ferent districts in the state suitable for agriculture. These dis- 
tricts, as I have said before, compose only a small part of Califor- 
nia, and have strongly-marked boundaries. They are nearly 
all valley-land, shut in by mountains. The Great Utah Basin 
has very little tillable land in the state; there are small patches 
of fertile soil, but too slight to deserve special mention. The 
Colorado Basin is in about the same condition. It is possible 
that a considerable tract of land will be rendered fit for tillage 
by turning the Colorado into the low part of the desert; but 
this is a remote contingency, and we have no accurate infor- 
mation about the character of the soil which it is proposed to 
irrigate in this manner. In a few little valleys, however, just 
at the eastern foot of the Coast Range, the soil is fertile, and 
the climate so warm, that fruits ripen six weeks earlier than 
on, the western side. 
The largest tracts of tillable land in the Klamath Basin are 
the Scott and Shasta valleys, each about thirty miles long and 
four wide. They are elevated from three to four thousand 
feet above the sea; the winters are severe, and frosts common 
in spring and autumn, and not rare in summer. Most of the 
soil is a gravelly clay, with a rich, sandy loam, along the im- 
mediate borders of the streams. Wheat, oats, apples, and 
potatoes, do well; but maize, peaches, melons, tomatoes, and 
sweet-potatoes, require a warmer climate. There is some level 
land in the eastern part of the Klamath Basin, near the Kla- 
math Lakes, but the soil is barren, and the vegetation like 
that of a desert. Del Norte county, which may be said to 
belong to-the Klamath Basin, has 44,117 acres of land, of 
which 15,240 are covered with redwood, 7,277 with spruce, 
19,204 are prairie, 2,400 are sand-ridges, and 4,712 are in la- 
goons. Most of the redwood land is level and fertile, but the 
timber is dense almost beyond example, and could not be 
cleared profitably, because all the redwood stumps throw out 
