sour.

They are dried in the shade, and on straw, which lets the air get to every
part. Irrigation is not good after the tree bears, as the figs do not dry
so readily. Birds and ants are fond of the fruit; and in one place I was
told the birds took almost the whole of the first crop. There are many
varieties of the fig grown in this State, but the White Smyrna is, I
believe, thought to be the best for market. There are no large plantations
of this tree in the State, but it is found on almost every farm and
country place, and is a very wholesome fruit when eaten green.

When the farmers of the Sacramento Valley become tired of sowing wheat,
and when the land comes into the hands of small farmers, as it is now
doing to some extent, it will be discovered that fruit-trees are surer and
more profitable than grain. A considerable emigration is now coming into
California; and I advise every one who goes there to farm to lose no time
before planting an orchard. Trees grow very rapidly, and it will be many
years before such fruits as the cherry, plum, apricot, or the raisin-grape
are too abundant to yield to their owners exceptionally large profits.

[Illustration: SHIPPING LUMBER, MENDOCINO COUNTY.]

CHAPTER III.

THE TULE LANDS AND LAND DRAINAGE.

While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these
go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in
some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres.

If you will take, on a map of California, Stockton, Sacramento, and San
Francisco for guiding points, you will see that a large part of the land
lying between these cities is marked "swamp and overflowed." Until within
five or six years these lands attracted but little attention. It was known
that they were extremely fertile, but it was thought that the cost and
uncertainty of reclaiming them were too great to warrant the enterprise.
Of late, however, they have been rapidly bought up by capitalists, and
their sagacity has been justified by the results on those tracts which
have been reclaimed.

These Tule lands--the word is pronounced as though spelled "toola"--are
simply deposits of muck, a mixture of the wash or sediment brought down
by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers with the decayed vegetable matter
resulting from an immense growth of various grasses, and of the reed
called the "tule," which often grows ten feet high in a season, and decays
every year. T