340 HUMOROUS FEATURES. 
‘In summer the roads are very dusty in California, and this 
dust is a disadvantage to the tobacco planter. On some of 
the plantations double rows of shade trees are planted along 
the main‘ roads, and gravel is spread on the interior roads ; 
and to protect the fields of tobacco-from the high winds 
which sweep through the California valley, almonds and 
cottonwoods are planted for wind-breaks in the fields. 
Some of the planters employ Chinese to cultivate the 
plants, who are very careful in hoeing and weeding the 
tobacco, living an apparently jolly life in shanties near the 
fields. A witty California correspondent of the Tobacco 
Leaf writes concerning the early cultivation of tobacco in 
that State : 
“We are doing a great many other things in California 
now besides raising grain, fruit, wine, wool, and gold. We 
are doing a. lively business in tobacco. Fifteen years ago I 
was down East on one occasion when they were gathering 
the tobacco crop—which goes to New York, and, by a pro- 
cess equal to wine making, becomes Havana tobacco. It 
struck me that this country was admirably adapted to its 
cultivation, and I brought back some seed, which I gave to 
a friend living on the bank of the Sacramento River, 
instructing him to plant it as per direction given me. We 
sat down and calculated the immense fortune we would 
make raising tobacco, if the experiment was a success. A 
week later my friend, who was an impatient sort of a fellow, 
wrote me just a line— No results.’ I replied, and asked him 
if he expected a crop of tobacco in seven days. A few weeks 
later he wrote, ‘Here she comes ;’ two weeks later, ‘How 
big is the stuff to be?’ two weeks later, ‘Not room for 
tobacco and me too. Who shall quit?’ I heard no more fora 
month and thought I would go up and see it. I did so, and 
the steamboat landed me at my friend’s ranch. I could not 
see the house, and hallooed. I heard an answer from the 
depths, and then following a path, I found my friend swing- 
ing in a hammock in the shade of a grove of tobacco trees. 
I desire to maintain my reputation for truth and yersctyy, sO 
necessary to a correspondent, so 1 won’t say how big or how, 
high those tobacco plants were; but my. friend’s hammock 
was: slung from them—and_ he was no feather-weight—the 
leaves completely. embowered the cottage. I congratulated 
him on the results—such a grove and such a shade—and 
