450 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
body can so safely be trusted to get all the gold out of a tract 
of land as the fee-simple owner of it. 
The federal government has refused to sell the mineral 
lands to the state, and the surveyor-general has instructed 
his deputies not to “sectionize” the land in the mineral dis- 
tricts, or within several miles of where any miners are at work. 
The truth is, that a large part of the land in the mining re- 
gion contains so little gold that it never can pay the miner, but 
is well suited for agricultural and horti¢ultural purposes. Cali- 
fornians confidently expect that some of the finest fruits and 
wines of our state—and that is as much as to say of the whole 
world—will be produced in the mining counties, within five 
years from the present time; and the government should pur- 
sue such a policy as will encourage the occupation and cultiva- 
tion of all the land suitable for such purposes. 
If the sale were once determined upon, undoubtedly difii- 
culties would arise as to the manner of carrying it into execu- 
tion; but these would be of little import, as compared with 
the evils caused by the present system. The whole mineral 
district should be surveyed at once, and sold in lots to persons 
who will live on, or work them, varying in size, according 
to location and supposed mineral wealth, from one hundred 
and sixty to eighty, forty, twenty, ten, five, two and a half, 
and one and a quarter acres. Perhaps it would be advisable 
to grant at first no lots where many miners may be at work 
within a small space. Large lots of ten, twenty, and forty 
acres, now unoccupied, and which would long remain unoccu- 
pied under the present system, would find abundant buyers 
should the government propose to grant the fee-simple. 
The offer of the mineral lands of the state, comprising about 
10,000,000 acres, for sale, would present one of the greatest op- 
portunities in the world for large numbers to secure great and 
certain wealth at a small immediate outlay ; and not only every 
man now in the country, but every one who has been here, 
would exert himself to the utmost to become the owner of a 
tract of land, the mines of which would probably clothe him 
