DESCRIPTION OF CALIFORNIA
CHAPTER XXIII.
Alta or Upper California With respect to Agriculture—Climate and Health of Alta California—Navigation of its two principal Rivers—Some of the principal Towns of Alta California—Its Bays and Harbors.
It can hardly be imagind, how the business of agriculture can be carrid on successfully in a country circumstancd like Upper California. In the mountainous portions, grain can not do well without resort to irrigation, and this, from extreme cost, can not well be done on an extensive scale.
The low country of the great valley of the St. Waukeen and Sacramento, is not unfrequently inundated a month or two, during the latter part of the winter, which renders passages from one part of the valley to another by land, entirely impracticable, and although along the borders of those two large rivers, and to some distance outward from them, there is a good soil, yet it is well known to farmers, that wheat will not live but a few days, entirely immersd in water—so that the wheat crop could never be depended upon as a safe investment.
Along the borders of these rivers, in some places, the native grasses are of a tolerable growth. Outward toward the base of the mountain, the earth becomes so dry during the summer, that vegetation is entirely dried up. It however arrives at maturity, at a stinted growth. I have seen native oats growing upon the plains of the great valley. These also are not very enormous in size. Notwithstanding, they for awhile furnish good grazing for the roaming cattle of the country, upon which, and the short bunch grass growing upon some of the hills, they become very fat during the summer. But as the grasses of the country are of so stinted a growth, farmers cannot live in crowded communities, as in the States, but at distances of from 10 to 20 miles apart. Locations of this kind are calld ranches, or rancheros, and farmers so living often own several hundred head of cattle and horses.
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The climate of California, of which I shall next speak, varies considerably in different parts of the country, according to its distance from the ocean or from the Neveda mountains, or the unevenness of the surface of the country.