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. The Tule lands are in part the low lands along the greater rivers, but in part they are islands, lying in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and separated from each other by deep, narrow "sloughs," or "slews" as they are called—branches of these rivers, in fact. Before reclamation they are overflowed commonly twice a year—in the winter, when the rains cause the rivers to rise; and again in June, when the melting of the snows on the mountains brings another rise. You may judge of the extent of this overflowed land by the following list of the principal Tule Islands:
| Acres. | |
| Robert's Island............................ | 67,000 |
| Union Island............................... | 50,000 |
| Grizzly Island.............................. | 15,000 |
| Sherman Island........................... | 14,000 |
| Grand Island............................... | 17,000 |
| Ryer Island................................. | 11,800 |
| Staten Island............................... | 8,000 |
| Bacon Island................................ | 7,000 |
| Brannan Island............................. | 7,000 |
| Bouldin Island.............................. | 5,000 |
| Mandeville Island......................... | 5,000 |
| Venice Island............................... | 4,000 |
| Tyler Island................................. | 4,000 |
| Andros Island............................... | 4,000 |
| Twitchell Island............................ | 3,600 |
| Sutter Island............................... | 3,000 |
| Joyce Island................................ | 1,500 |
| Rough and Ready Island............. | 1,500 |
| Long Island................................. | 1,000 |
| ------- | |
| In all........................... | 217,400 |
These are the largest islands; but you must understand that on the mainland, along the Sacramento and its affluents, there is a great deal of similar land, probably at least twice as much more, perhaps three times.
The swamp and overflowed lands were given by Congress to the State; and the State has, in its turn, virtually given them to private persons. It has sold them for one dollar per acre, of which twenty per cent. was paid down, or twenty cents per acre; and this money, less some small charges for recording the transfer and for inspecting the reclamation, is returned by the State to the purchaser if he, within three years after the purchase, reclaims his land. That is to say, the State gives away the land on condition that it shall be reclaimed and brought into cultivation.
During a number of years past enterprising individuals have undertaken to reclaim small tracts on these islands by diking them, but with not encouraging success, and it was not until a law was passed empowering the majority of owners of overflowed lands in any place to form a reclamation district, choose a Board of Reclamation, and levy a tax upon all the land in the district, for building and maintaining the dikes or levees that these lands really came into use.
Now, this work of draining is going on so fast that this year nearly six hundred miles of levee will be completed among the islands alone, not to speak of reclamation districts on the main-land. There seems to be a general determination to do the work thoroughly, the high floods of 1871-72 having shown the farmers and land-owners that they must build high and strong levees, or else lose all, or at least much, of their labor and outlay. During the spring of 1872 I saw huge breaks in some of the levees, which overflowed lands to the serious damage of farmers, for not only is the crop of the year lost, but orchards and vineyards, which flourish on the Tule lands, perished or were seriously injured by the waters.
Chinese labor is used almost entirely in making the levees. An engineer having planned the work, estimates are made, and thereupon Chinese foremen take contracts for pieces at stipulated rates, and themselves hire their countrymen for the actual labor. This subdivision, to which the perfect organization of Chinese labor readily lends itself, is very convenient. The engineer or master in charge of the work deals only with the Chinese foremen, pays them for the work done, and exacts of them the due performance of the contract.
The levee stuff is taken from the inside; thus the ditch is inside of the levee, and usually on the outside is a space of low marsh, which presently fills with willow and cotton-wood. You may sail along the river or slough, therefore, for miles, and see only occasional evidences of the embankment.
The soil is usually a tough turf, full of roots, which is very cheaply cut out with an instrument called a "tule-knife," and thrown up on the levee, where it seems to bind well, though one would not think it would. At frequent intervals are self-acting tide-gates for drainage; these are made of the redwood of the coast, which does not rot in the water. The rise and fall of the tides is about six feet. The levees have been in some places troubled with beaver, which, however, are now hunted for their fur, and will not long be troublesome. There is no musk-rat—an animal which would do serious damage here. The tule-rat lives on roots on the land, but is not active or strong enough to be injurious.
The levee is usually from six to eight feet broad on top, with the inside sloping; but I was told that experience had shown that the outside should be perpendicular. It is not unusual for parts of a levee to sink down, but I could hear of no case of capsizing. The Levee Board of a district appoints levee-masters, whose duty it is to look after the condition of the work, and on the islands I visited there were gangs of Chinamen engaged in repairing and heightening the embankments.
You land at a wharf, and, standing on top of the levee, you see before you usually the house and other farm buildings, set up on piles, for security against a break and overflow; and beyond a great track of level land, two or three or five feet below the level of the levee, and, if it has but lately been reclaimed, covered with the remnants of tules and of grass sods.
When the levee is completed, and the land has had opportunity to drain a little, the first operation is to burn it over. This requires time and some care, for it is possible to burn too deep; and in some parts the fire burns deep holes if it is not checked. If the land is covered with dry tules, the fire is set so easily that a single match will burn a thousand acres, the strong trade-wind which blows up the river and across these lands carrying the fire rapidly. If the dry tules have been washed off, a Chinaman is sent to dig holes through the upper sod; after him follows another, with a back-load of straw wisps, who sticks a wisp into each hole, lights it with a match, and goes on. At this rate, I am told, it cost on one island only one hundred dollars to burn fifteen hundred acres.
When this work is done you have an ash-heap, extremely disagreeable to walk over, and not yet solid enough to bear horses or oxen. Accordingly, the first crop is put on with sheep. First the tract is sowed, usually with a coffee-mill sower or hand machine, and, I am told, at the rate of about thirty pounds of wheat to the acre, though I believe it would be better to sow more thickly. Then comes a band or flock of about five hundred sheep. These are driven over the surface in a compact body, and at no great rate of speed, and it is surprising how readily they learn what is expected of them, and how thoroughly they tramp in the seed. Dogs are used in this work to keep the sheep together, and they expect to "sheep in," as they call it, about sixteen acres a day with five hundred animals, giving these time besides to feed on the levee and on spare land.
Tule land thus prepared has actually yielded from forty to sixty bushels of wheat per acre. It does not always do so, because, as I myself saw, it is often badly and irregularly burned over, and probably otherwise mismanaged. The crop is taken off with headers, as is usual in this State.
For the second year's crop the land is plowed. A two-share gang-plow is used, with a seat for the plowman. It is drawn by four horses, who have to be shod with broad wooden shoes, usually made of ash plank, nine by eleven inches, fastened to the iron shoes of the horse by screws.
The soil does not appear to be sour, and no doubt the ashes from the burning off do much to sweeten it where it needs that. But several years are needed to reduce the ground to its best condition for tillage, and the difference in this respect between newly-burned or second-crop lands and such matured farms as that of Mr. Bigelow on Sherman Island—who has been there eight or nine years—is very striking.
It seemed to me that the farmers and land-owners with whom I spoke knew "for certain" but very little about the best ways to manage these lands, and that the advice of a thorough scientific agriculturist, like Professor Johnson of Yale, would be very valuable to them. Now, they know only that the land when burned over will bear large crops of wheat; and, of course, in all practical measures for economically putting in and taking off a wheat crop the Californian needs no instructor.
The soil seemed to me, so far as they dig into it—say six feet deep—to be, not peat, but a mass of undecayed or but partly decayed roots, strongly adhering together, so that the upper part of a levee, taken of course from the lowest part of the ditch, lay in firm sods or tussocks. These, however, seem to decay pretty rapidly on exposure to the air. The drainage is not usually deeper than four feet, and in places the water-level was but three feet below the surface. The newly reclaimed land being very light, suffers from the dry season, and is often irrigated, which, as it lies below the river-level, can be quickly and cheaply done.
Sherman Island was one of the earliest to be reclaimed, and there I visited the fine farm of Mr. Bigelow—a New Hampshire man, I believe, and apparently a thorough farmer. He has lived on tule land ten years, and his fields were consequently in the finest condition. Here I saw a three-hundred-acre field of wheat, as fine as wheat could be. He thought he should get about forty-five bushels per acre this year. He had got, he told me, between sixty-five and seventy bushels per acre, and without any further labor the next year brought him from the same fields fifty-two bushels per acre as a "volunteer" or self-seeded crop.
Here I saw luxuriant red clover and blue grass, and he had also a field of carrots, which do well on this alluvial bottom, it seems. But what surprised me more was to find that apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, apricots—all the fruits—do well on this soil. With us I think the pear would not do well on peat; but here it withstood last year's flood, which broke a levee and overflowed Mr. Bigelow's farm, and the trees do not appear to have suffered. He had also wind-breaks of osier willow, which of course grows rapidly, and had been a source of profit to him in, yielding cuttings for sale.
Timothy does not do well on tule land, as its roots do not push down deep enough, and the surface of such light soils always dries up rapidly. Mr. Bigelow told me that he once sowed alfalfa in February with wheat, and took off forty-five bushels of wheat per acre, and a ton and a half of alfalfa later; and pastured (in a thirty-acre field) twenty-five head of stock till Christmas on the same land, after the hay was cut.
They have one great advantage on the tule lands—they can put in their crops at any time from November to the last of June.
It was very curious to sit on the veranda at the farm-house, after dinner, with a high levee immediately in front of us almost hiding the Sacramento River, and with a broad canal—the inner ditch—full of fresh water, running along the boundary as far as the eye could reach, the level of the levee broken occasionally by tide-gates. The prospect would have been monotonous had we not had at one side the lovely mountain range of which Mount Diablo is the prominent peak. But the great expanse of clean fields, level as a billiard-table, and in as fine tilth as though this was a model farm, was a delight to the eye, too.
It may interest grape-growers in the East to be told that of what we call "foreign grapes," the Muscat of Alexandria succeeds best in these moist, peaty lands. It is the market grape here. Trees have not grown to a great size on the tule lands, but bees are very fond of the wild-flowers which abound in the unreclaimed marshes, and, having no hollow trees to build in, they adapt themselves to circumstances by constructing their hives on the outside or circumference of trees.
Fencing costs here about three hundred and twenty dollars per mile. The redwood posts are driven into the ground with mauls. Farm laborers receive in the tules thirty dollars per month and board if they are white men, but one dollar a day and feed themselves, where they are Chinese.
On Twitchell Island I found an experiment making in ramie and jute, Mr. Finch, formerly of Haywards, having already planted twenty-six acres of ramie, and intending to put seven acres into jute, for which he had the plants all ready, raised in a canvas-covered inclosure. He raised ramie successfully last year, and sold, he told me, from one-tenth of an acre, two hundred and sixty three pounds of prepared ramie, for fifteen cents per pound. He used, to dress it, a machine made in California, which several persons have assured me works well and cheaply, a fact which ramie growers in Louisiana may like to know; for the chief obstacle to ramie culture in this country has been, so far, the lack of a cheap and rapidly-working machine for its preparation. It struck me that Mr. Finch's experiment with ramie and jute would promise better were it not made on new land from which I believe only one crop had been taken.
When these tule lands have been diked and drained, they are sold for from twenty to twenty-five dollars per acre. Considering the crops they bear, and their nearness to market—ships could load at almost any of the islands—I suppose the price is not high; but a farmer ought to be sure that the levees are high enough, and properly made. To levee them costs variously, from three to twelve dollars per acre.
The tule lands which lie on the main-land, and which are equally rich with the islands, are usually ditched and diked for less than six dollars per acre; and this sum is regarded, I believe, by the State Commissioners as the maximum which the owners are allowed to borrow on reclamation land-bonds for the purpose of levee building.
I spoke awhile back of the existence of beavers in the tule country. Elk and grizzly bears used also to abound here, and I am told that on the unreclaimed lands elk are still found, though the grizzlies have gone to the mountains. One of the curiosities hereabouts is the ark, or floating house, used by the hunters, which you see anchored or moored in the sloughs: in these they live, using a small boat when they go ashore to hunt, and floating from place to place with the tide. On one of these arks I saw a magnificent pair of elk horns from an animal recently shot.
