to New York, and, by a process
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 for a 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 swinging in a
hammock in the shade of a grove of tobacco trees. I desire
to maintain my reputation for truth and veracity, so
necessary to a correspondent, so I 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 moreover I
said, 'You will be permanently rid of mosquitoes.' 'Will I!'
said he. 'Do you know that these gallinippers have learned
to chew already, and the habit is spreading so that all the
old he-fellows are coming down from Marysville to take a
hand.' I inquired if my friend had cured any or smoked any.
He pointed to a Manyanita pipe split open on the ground, and
said. 'Before it was real strong, some three weeks ago, I
tried a leaf in that pipe. Observe the result--busted it the
second whiff, and knocked me off the log I was sitting on.'
Such was the first experiment in tobacco raising in
California. But now they have learned the trick. They have
searched the State for the poorest and most barren soil,
and, having found it are cultivating a splendid article of
genuine Havana leaf tobacco, manufacturing cigars as good as
you get one time in twent