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AGRICULTURE. 158 
10,000 acres each; and American valley, 5,000. In all of them 
the soil is very sandy, but not barren. They are from three to 
five thousand feet above the sea; all shut in by high moun- 
tains; and all containing a considerable portion of swampy 
land. 
The low land of the Sacramento Basin comprises 20,000 
square miles—about 3,000,000 acres. The Sacramento valley 
has several benches. The lowest bench is about twenty feet 
above the low-water mark of the river, and has a soil of sandy 
loam, richer immediately along the stream than farther off. 
The next bench, very irregular in height aud width, has a soil 
of red, gravelly clay, which extends back to the mountains. 
In some places this clay becomes very soft in wet seasons—so 
soft, that weak cattle may mire down in it and be unable to 
extricate themselves. I knew a case where a toam of weak 
oxen, exhausted by hard driving and scanty food, sank down 
in a wet gravel-ridge, so that only their heads and a little of 
their necks and shoulders appeared above-ground ; and passing 
the place some months later, when the ground had become as 
hard as clay and gravel ever are, I saw the six bare skulls of 
the oxen resting with their chins on the earth where they had 
sunk down, and behind them were the projecting spines of the 
back-bone, with the yokes still on the necks of each pair of 
oxen, This gravel is seldom cultivated at present, but in many 
places it will produce good crops of barley. It forms at least 
one-half of the Sacramento valley. Very little of it; can be irri- 
gated; and the general belief is, that no corn, potatoes, garden 
vegetables, fruit, or grapes, can be grown on it without irriga- 
tion. The sandy loam produces large crops of wheat, barley, 
and oats, without irrigation. TFruit-trees and grape-vines thrive 
without it after they grow to be three or four years old, but 
in most places require it till they have taken a good start. 
Garden vegetables cannot be grown without irrigation, unless 
planted very early, and of such kinds as ripen before July. In 
the level valley there are no springs, nor are there any artesian 
wells; so the only method of getting water is by pumping it 
