I am told that when Smyrna figs sell for twenty to thirty cents per pound, California figs bring but from five to ten cents.  The tree comes into full bearing, where its location is favorable, in its third or fourth year; and ought to yield then about sixty pounds of dried figs.  I suspect the cost of labor will control the drying of figs, for they must be picked by hand.  If they fall to the ground they are easily bruised, and the bruised part turns sour.

They are dried in the shade, and on straw, which lets the air get to every part.  Irrigation is not good after the tree bears, as the figs do not dry so readily.  Birds and ants are fond of the fruit; and in one place I was told the birds took almost the whole of the first crop.  There are many varieties of the fig grown in this State, but the White Smyrna is, I believe, thought to be the best for market.  There are no large plantations of this tree in the State, but it is found on almost every farm and country place, and is a very wholesome fruit when eaten green.

When the farmers of the Sacramento Valley become tired of sowing wheat, and when the land comes into the hands of small farmers, as it is now doing to some extent, it will be discovered that fruit-trees are surer and more profitable than grain.  A considerable emigration is now coming into California; and I advise every one who goes there to farm to lose no time before planting an orchard.  Trees grow very rapidly, and it will be many years before such fruits as the cherry, plum, apricot, or the raisin-grape are too abundant to yield to their owners exceptionally large profits.

[Illustration:  SHIPPING LUMBER, MENDOCINO COUNTY.]

CHAPTER III.

THE TULE LANDS AND LAND DRAINAGE.

While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres.

If you will take, on a map of California, Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco for guiding points, you will see that a large part of the land lying between these cities is marked “swamp and overflowed.”  Until within five or six years these lands attracted but little attention.  It was known that they were extremely fertile, but it was thought that the cost and uncertainty of reclaiming them were too great to warrant the enterprise.  Of late, however, they have been rapidly bought up by capitalists, and their sagacity has been justified by the results on those tracts which have been reclaimed.