It may interest grape-growers in the East to be told that of what we call “foreign grapes,” the Muscat of Alexandria succeeds best in these moist, peaty lands.  It is the market grape here.  Trees have not grown to a great size on the tule lands, but bees are very fond of the wild-flowers which abound in the unreclaimed marshes, and, having no hollow trees to build in, they adapt themselves to circumstances by constructing their hives on the outside or circumference of trees.

[Illustration:  MOUNT HOOD, OREGON.]

Fencing costs here about three hundred and twenty dollars per mile.  The redwood posts are driven into the ground with mauls.  Farm laborers receive in the tules thirty dollars per month and board if they are white men, but one dollar a day and feed themselves, where they are Chinese.

On Twitchell Island I found an experiment making in ramie and jute, Mr. Finch, formerly of Haywards, having already planted twenty-six acres of ramie, and intending to put seven acres into jute, for which he had the plants all ready, raised in a canvas-covered inclosure.  He raised ramie successfully last year, and sold, he told me, from one-tenth of an acre, two hundred and sixty three pounds of prepared ramie, for fifteen cents per pound.  He used, to dress it, a machine made in California, which several persons have assured me works well and cheaply, a fact which ramie growers in Louisiana may like to know; for the chief obstacle to ramie culture in this country has been, so far, the lack of a cheap and rapidly-working machine for its preparation.  It struck me that Mr. Finch’s experiment with ramie and jute would promise better were it not made on new land from which I believe only one crop had been taken.

When these tule lands have been diked and drained, they are sold for from twenty to twenty-five dollars per acre.  Considering the crops they bear, and their nearness to market—­ships could load at almost any of the islands—­I suppose the price is not high; but a farmer ought to be sure that the levees are high enough, and properly made.  To levee them costs variously, from three to twelve dollars per acre.

The tule lands which lie on the main-land, and which are equally rich with the islands, are usually ditched and diked for less than six dollars per acre; and this sum is regarded, I believe, by the State Commissioners as the maximum which the owners are allowed to borrow on reclamation land-bonds for the purpose of levee building.

I spoke awhile back of the existence of beavers in the tule country.  Elk and grizzly bears used also to abound here, and I am told that on the unreclaimed lands elk are still found, though the grizzlies have gone to the mountains.  One of the curiosities hereabouts is the ark, or floating house, used by the hunters, which you see anchored or moored in the sloughs:  in these they live, using a small boat when they go ashore to hunt, and floating from place to place with the tide.  On one of these arks I saw a magnificent pair of elk horns from an animal recently shot.