Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

by Charles Nordhoff

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.