Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/404

 384 in a series of small farms. This is probably true, and the system as it exists may be ascribed in part to the greed of individuals, but it arises principally out of the natural features of the country. The wealth of the large holders alone enables them to undertake works of improvement, such as canal-making, drainage, and tree-planting, on an effectual scale. Perhaps the State will have to lend its assistance, and establish a public system of irrigation and drainage, before the land can be fully prepared for the small settler.

Water! water! water! How to slake the thirst of this parched, brown country, and turn it over to honest toil and thrift, is the great problem as we go southward, and the processes of irrigation are the most distinctive marks upon the landscape wherever it is improved.

It is in early November that we begin to traverse the long San Joaquin Valley from Lathrop Junction, just below Stockton, southward. The side tracks of the railroad are crowded with platform-cars laden with wheat for the sea-board. The "elevator" system is not yet in use, and the grain is contained in sacks for convenient handling.

Hereabouts are some of the most famous wheat ranches. A man will plough but a single furrow a day on his farm, but this may be twenty miles long. There is sufficient rain-fall for the cereals, but not for the more exacting crops. The land gives but few bushels to the acre under the easy system of farming, but it must be remembered that there are a great many acres. The stubble of the grain-fields is whitened with wild-fowl. At a way-station a small rustic in an immense pair of boots goes over to a pool and blazes away with a shot-gun. Pres-