labor-saving machinery employed, and human labor, which is always the
most costly, put to its best and most profitable uses. They talk here of
steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the
steam-plow will be first practically and generally used, so far as the
United States are concerned, in these Californian valleys, where I have
seen furrows two miles long, and ten eight-horse teams following each
other with gang-plows.

Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in their pursuit of a wheat crop. You
may see a farmer who plows hundreds of acres, but he will have his wheat
growing up to the edge of his veranda. If he keeps a vegetable garden, he
has performed a heroic act of self-denial; and as for flowers, they must
grow among the wheat or nowhere.

Moreover, while he has great ingenuity in his methods, the farmer of the
Sacramento plain has but little originality in his planting. He raises
wheat and barley. He might raise a dozen, a score, of other products, many
more profitable, and all obliging him to cultivate less ground, but it
is only here and there you meet with one who appreciates the remarkable
capabilities of the soil and climate. Near Tehama some Chinese have in
the last two years grown large crops of pea-nuts, and have, I was told,
realized handsome profits from a nut which will be popular in America,
I suppose, as long as there is a pit or a gallery in a theatre; but the
pea-nut makes a valuable oil, and as it produces enormously here, it will
some day be raised for this use, as much as for the benefit of the
old women who keep fruit-stands on the street corners. It would not be
surprising if the Chinese, who continue to come over to California in
great numbers, should yet show the farmers here what can be done on small
farms by patient and thorough culture. As yet they confine their culture
of land mainly to vegetable gardens.

To the farmer the valley and foot-hill lands of the Sacramento will be the
most attractive; and there are still here thousands of acres in the hands
of the Government and the railroad company to be obtained so cheaply
that, whether for crops or for grazing, it will be some time before the
mountainous lands and the pretty valleys they contain, north of Redding,
the present terminus of the railroad, will attract settlers. But for the
traveler the region north of Redding to the State line offers uncommon
attractions.

The Sacramento Valley closes in as you journey