A large part of the Sacramento Valley is still used for grazing purposes, but the farmers press every year more and more upon the graziers; and the policy of the Government in holding its own lands within what are called “railroad limits”—­that is to say, within twenty miles on each side of the railroad—­for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead laws, as well as the policy of the railroad company in selling its lands, the alternate sections for twenty miles on each side of the road, on easy terms and with long credit to actual settlers, prevents land monopoly in this region.  There is room, and cheap and fertile land, for an immense population of industrious farmers, who can live here in a mild climate, and till a fertile soil, and who need only intelligence and enterprise to raise profitably raisins, orchard fruits, castor-oil, peanuts, silk, and a dozen other products valuable in the world’s commerce, and not produced elsewhere in this country so easily.  It is still in this region a time of large farms poorly tilled; but I believe that small farms, from 160 to 320 acres, will prove far more profitable in the end.

The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite wonderful and startling.  A year brings about changes for which one can hardly look in ten years.  It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary.  But a few experiments showed to land-owners and capitalists the enormous advantages of irrigation, and now this scheme has sufficient capital behind it, and large land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands to raise means to hasten the completion of the canal.  Two years ago the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly, and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe investment.  But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed, and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed eighteen months ago.  Two years ago the question whether California could produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by several persons, and it is now certain that this State can produce—­and from its poorest side-hill lands—­raisins enough to supply the whole Union.  Not a year passes but some new and valuable product of the soil is naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most, ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future of California.