“The most northerly grant in the State is that formerly owned by the late Major Redding.  It is partially subdivided.  Like the Dye grant, it contains some rich bottom-land, but, like it, is mostly adapted for grazing and grape growing.  Haggin and Tevis lately bought (or hold for debt) about fifteen thousand acres of this rancho, which are worth about one hundred thousand dollars, or about seven dollars per acre.  It is understood from inquiries made from the owners of these two last named tracts, that they are willing to sell grain lands at about an average of thirty dollars per acre.”

Of course these grants make up, in the aggregate, but a small part of the arable land of the Sacramento Valley.

[Illustration:  “TACOMA,” OR MOUNT RAINIER.]

CHAPTER XI.

TOBACCO CULTURE—­WITH A NEW METHOD OF CURING THE LEAF.

The manufacture of cigars is one of the largest industries of San Francisco.  Last year the Government received taxes on 78,000,000 cigars made in the State of California, and in September alone taxes were paid on 8,000,000.  But, though the State has thousands of acres of land well fitted to produce tobacco, and though the “weed” has been grown here for twenty years or more with great success, so far as getting a heavy crop is concerned, I doubt if even 1,000,000 of cigars have, until this fall, been made of tobacco raised in California.

There has, however, been no lack of efforts to produce here tobacco fit to manufacture into cigars and for smoking and chewing purposes.  The soil in many parts of the State is peculiarly adapted to this plant; the climate, mild and regular, favored its growth and hastened its perfection.  The best seed was procured from Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, and Cuba.  But for many years the product was rank, coarse, and fitter for sheep-wash than for any other purpose.

Meantime, however, not a few men familiar with the old processes of raising and curing the plant have tried their best ingenuity to improve the quality.  It was thought that the soil was too rich, because the tobacco makes a rapid and heavy growth; but planting on thinner or older soil did not answer.  Several methods of curing were contrived, and there is now reason to believe that the one known as the Culp process, from the name of its patentee, will produce the desired result.  I had heard and read so much about it, and about the merit of the tobacco produced by it, that I went down to Gilroy, seventy or eighty miles south of San Francisco, to see what had really been accomplished.  The account I give below will probably interest many tobacco growing and manufacturing readers, while it will, I fear, painfully affect the spirits of the anti-tobacconists; for there is reason to believe that tobacco will become presently one of the most important and valuable crops of this State.

I must premise that I am not an expert in tobacco, nor familiar with the methods pursued in the East.  I have seen a tobacco-field and the inside of a Connecticut curing-house, and that is about all.  I give, therefore, not opinions, but facts.