TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
329 
down the placid current of that river, to the great commercial 
marts of that and other lands. 
This valley is now the great hunting ground of the Califor¬ 
nians. Vast herds of wild horses and elk are met with in all 
parts of it. The latter animal, the noble elk, is hunted by the 
Spaniards for his hide and tallow. These people go out in 
large companies, with fleet horses, and lasso them as they do 
the bullocks near the coast. The deer also, and antelope, are 
found here in great numbers ; and are killed for the same pur¬ 
pose. The grisly bear inhabits the mountain sides and upper 
vales. These are so numerous, fat and large, that a common¬ 
sized merchant ship might be laden with oil from the hunt of 
a single season. 
On the western side of the mouth of the San Joaquim, there 
is a vast tract of marshy land, and some hundreds of low isl¬ 
ands in the Upper Bay, which are saturated by the tides. The 
usual ebb and flow at this place is about four feet ; conse¬ 
quently this low surface is enriched every year by the sedi¬ 
ment of the vernal freshets, and yields an immense growth of 
rushes. These grounds would probably make the best rice 
fields in North America. The water of the tides is either en¬ 
tirely fresh or very slightly brackish : it may easily be let in 
upon the field at flood, and drawn off at ebb. These Tulares, 
as the Californians call them, those thousand isles and those 
great rush wastes, will, it is believed, be the only rice-fields 
of any value on the Pacific coast of the continent. A noble 
and valuable vale is that of the San Joaquim ; six hundred 
miles of prairies covered with grass and wild oats, cut by 
streams, shaded with lofty forests ! Prairies, some ten, some 
twenty, others one hundred miles in extent, overhung by jut¬ 
ting promontories, crowned with gigantic forests, the wild 
grains, grasses, cattle, horses, leaping deer, the grisly bear 
and the stately elk, tossing his antlers to the breezes, are 
elements of its present state. And we may expect when the 
ox treads the furrow, and the axe, and the flail, awrnken their 
music on the plains, that the arable portions will be reclaimed 
48 
