a
dozen other products valuable in the world's commerce, and not produced
elsewhere in this country so easily. It is still in this region a time of
large farms poorly tilled; but I believe that small farms, from 160 to 320
acres, will prove far more profitable in the end.

The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite
wonderful and startling. A year brings about changes for which one can
hardly look in ten years. It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a
system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was
broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to
give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number
of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary. But a few experiments
showed to land-owners and capitalists the enormous advantages of
irrigation, and now this scheme has sufficient capital behind it, and
large land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands
to raise means to hasten the completion of the canal. Two years ago
the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly,
and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe
investment. But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed,
and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed
eighteen months ago. Two years ago the question whether California could
produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which
sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by
several persons, and it is now certain that this State can produce--and
from its poorest side-hill lands--raisins enough to supply the whole
Union. Not a year passes but some new and valuable product of the soil is
naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the
climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most,
ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all
their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is
the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to
have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future
of California.

But, in truth, it is not easy to exaggerate, for the soil in the great
valleys is deep and of extraordinary fertility; there are no forests to
clear away, and farms lie ready-made to the settlers' hands; the range of
products include