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corn, sorghum sugar, root crops, and vegetables, milk, butter, and cheese, and pork, can be furnished by the farmers, as well as most of the fruits, while the herdsmen can furnish the beef and mutton, and the sportsmen, the game, large and small; but there will be little farm produce from the mountains to export.

Much of what is grown in the mountains will require irrigation, and with it will yield most bountifully. Even the best authenticated statements of the enormous crops produced by irrigation are received with incredulity. Seventy, eighty, and in some cases even one hundred bushels of wheat, not on one acre alone, but on a tract of thirty or fifty acres; a like amount of barley; eighty to a hundred and ten bushels of oats; and from 150 to 200 bushels of Indian corn; 400, 500, and 600 bushels of potatoes to the acre; these amounts, incredible as they seem, are materially below what is claimed for these lands, some of which without water would have proved utterly barren and worthless. In Montana these mountain valleys do not lack water, the rainfall being there sufficient to produce good crops, and the whole region abounding in streams.

Between the western slope of the Rocky Mountain ranges and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, or, as they are called in Oregon and Washington Territory, the Cascade Mountains, the character of the lands varies as you go southward from British Columbia. In the eastern part of Washington Territory and Oregon, the lands form generally a high, treeless plateau, moderately fertile, but, except in the river bottoms, generally better adapted to grazing than to cultivation. Farther south, within the limits of the Great Basin which includes nearly one-half of Utah and Nevada, the area of cultivable land is comparatively small, though by means of irrigation it is much increased; considerable tracts are unfit even for grazing purposes, but these are generally good mining-lands. East and south of the Great Basin are the sources of the Grand, Green, San Juan and Little Colorado, as well as other smaller tributaries of the Rio Colorado of the West, and that great river itself. These all flow through Western Colorado, Southeastern Utah, Western New Mexico and Arizona, in such deep cañons that they leave many of the

mesas and table-lands of these territories to drought and sterility, except where irrigation is possible, or when, as in the autumn and winter of 1879-1880, extraordinary and protracted rains deluged the country. Yet this region is well adapted to grazing, and by a scanty irrigation will yield the crops and fruits necessary for the sustenance of its inhabitants. In New Mexico and Arizona there are, with irrigation, a larger amount of arable lands than has hitherto been supposed.

Governor Frémont writes that, in the summer of 1879, a little band of Maricopa Indians, near Prescott, who had taken to farming, sent to San Francisco, over the Southern California road, ten car loads,—200 tons, of wheat of their own raising, which was of such excellent quality that it brought $2.24 the hundred pounds when the usual market price was only $2.10. The land on which such wheat could be grown, in an unusually dry season, must be counted arable.

West of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, we find a fine agricultural region, Western Washington, Oregon, and California. This is the land of gigantic forest trees, the sequoias, the cedars, firs, and loftiest pines, the tulip tree, liquidambar and other forest trees, which have no rivals in the Northern Hemisphere. It is also the land of wheat and barley, of Indian corn and oats, of the vine, and its abundant wine product, as well as raisins of the best quality; and in its southern portion, of the orange, lemon and lime, the olive, the fig, the pomegranate, and the Madeira nut or English walnut, and the French and Italian chestnut. The latter is, in Italy, largely cultivated for the foodproducing quality of its nuts.

The wheat crop of California is larger than that of any other State, ranging from 36,000,000 to 50,000,000 bushels annually, and is of the very best quality, bringing, in European markets, higher prices than any other. It never rains in harvest-time in California, and, on the large grain ranches, the giant header clips off the heads of the wheat, sweeps them into the huge wagonbox from which they are shot into the threshing-machine, which is geared on to the header, and the reaping and threshing are carried on simultaneously; while the grain as it comes from the

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threshing-machine is sacked automatically, and the sacks are piled in heaps in the field, remaining uninjured in the pure, dry air, till they are sent to market or shipped for Europe. A large part of the crop is shipped in July. Barley is also a very important crop, California producing more than one-third of the whole barley crop of the United States, and nearly three times as much as any other State. Its product in 1878 was about 15,000,000 bushels, an average of twenty-three bushels to the acre, though forty to sixty bushels is not an unusual product. The production of oats is hardly sufficient to supply the State demand, being but 4,350,000 bushels in 1878, though considerable dependence is placed on wild oats, which are used largely for hay. Indian corn is also a small crop, about 3,500,000 bushels in 1878, or about thirty-five bushels to the acre. The Alfalfa and the various species of millet, including the pearl millet and the Dhourra or Egyptian rice-corn, are cultivated by the dairymen for fodder. Beans are largely grown. The root crops are more remarkable for enormous growth than for fine flavor. The sugar-beet yields several crops, and contains a high percentage of sugar. Hops are also an important crop, and other minor crops add to the aggregate of production. The fruits of California have a deservedly high reputation. The apple must yield the palm to those of Oregon, Washington, or the States and Territories farther East, but the pear, quince, peach, apricot, cherry, orange, lemon, pomegranate, fig, prune, plum, olive, currant, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, banana, plantain, and pineapple all attain a high degree of excellence and a marvellous size.

In addition to the native grape and the Mission grape, both of which are very largely grown, every known variety of grape found in Europe or America is cultivated here, and both in the flavor and quality of the fruit, and the abundance of the yield, they all greatly surpass their product where they are native. The production of raisins was at first a partial failure, in consequence of incomplete drying, but having learned the art of drying these as well as most other fruits, the raisins of the sun, from California, in their recent samples, surpass those of any

other part of the globe. The dried-fruits of the State, after failures from careless drying, are now beginning to take rank with the best in the world. The California wines and brandies have not till recently attained to their best condition. They were too strongly alcoholic, fiery and heady, and were put upon the market before they had had sufficient age to ripen them. The conditions of climate and dryness were not taken into account by the wine-growers, and the Mission grape being largely used for wine-making, its peculiar, earthy taste impaired the value of the wine. These difficulties have been, now, in a great measure overcome, and the present and future vintages of California will compare favorably with the best wines of Europe, with the additional advantage of being purer. The California brandy, when it has a sufficient age, is preferred by connoisseurs to the best cognac. There is yet, however, a considerable importation, not only of French brandies, but of the lighter and cheaper French wines, especially clarets, which might be made there of really better quality than the imported wines.

Both Oregon and Washington Territory contain, besides their great amount of timber lands, and their extensive ranges for grazing, large tracts of fertile, arable lands. There is no lack of rainfall in the region west of the Cascade Mountains. At some points the skies weep too constantly for successful grain culture, but this very excess of moisture gives to the forests a more gigantic growth, and to the grasses a larger and more vigorous development. For the most part, however, Oregon and Washington are well adapted to the culture of the cereals. Even Eastern Washington and Oregon, formerly regarded as a desert and rainless region, proves, notwithstanding its whitish, alkaline soil, and its moderate rainfall, one of the finest wheat regions in the world. With deep plowing no irrigation is needed, and the wheat, large, full-berried, and of the very best quality, weighing from sixty-five to sixty-nine pounds to the bushel (the legal weight is sixty pounds), turns out from thirty to sixty bushels to the acre; many of the farms averaging from forty to fifty bushels for their entire crop. In 1879 the wheat crop of Oregon exceeded 10,000,000 bushels, and that of Washington

was about half as much, simply because there were not men enough to sow a larger crop. All the small grains, rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat are successfully cultivated there; oats yielding from seventy to eighty bushels to the acre. Indian corn is a tolerably sure crop in Oregon, but less so in Washington on account of the cool nights. The root crops yield enormously, and there is a ready market for them at good prices at home among the lumbermen, fishermen, and manufacturing population. of the towns. Flax, though cultivated mainly for the seed, is of excellent quality, the lint being longer, finer and silkier than elsewhere. Of fruits, the apple and pear are unsurpassed, and most of the small fruits are successfully cultivated. Oregon apples, pears, and berries command a high price in the San Francisco market.

CHAPTER XIII.

TIMBER AND LUMBER-TREE-PLANTING-THE FOREST GROWTHS IN DIFFERENT SECTIONS-CALIFORNIA FORESTS-HORTICULTURE AND FRUIT-CULTURE— FLORICULTURE-WILD FLOWERs—Market Gardening.

As we have already seen, a considerable portion of this Great West is but scantily supplied with forest trees. In 1871, a careful estimate put down, in these twenty States and Territories, the woodland, as covering 198,124,802 acres; but in the nine years which have since elapsed, the demand for railroad ties and structures, for bridges, for machinery, partly of wood, for mines, for dwellings, and public buildings, and for export, has diminished this area by nearly or quite twenty-five per cent. Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington, and perhaps Texas, and Arkansas to a moderate extent, are the only States or Territories that export lumber. Montana has good timberlands, but she is not as yet producing more than lumber enough for the home demand. lowa, Nebraska, Dakota, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, have not timber and lumber enough for their own needs, and are