Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/444

 production, and abounding with timber of the greatest size." The mean temperature of San Francisco in December is 53°, the maximum being 66° and the minimum 46, while the hygrometer is said to indicate a remarkably dry atmosphere.

In different districts, the country is varied by hill and dell, and by occasional mountains rising to the height of a thousand, and sometimes three thousand feet, while the adjacent soil is of the richest loam. A river has been traced some hundreds of miles upward, toward the northeast, from the bay of San Francisco. From Monterey to Santa Clara, the scenery "may be compared to a park which had been planted with the true old English oak, with its undergrowth cut away, and the stately lords of the forest left in complete possession of the soil, which was covered with luxuriant herbage, and beautifully diversified with pleasing eminences and vales."

In the garden of the Mission of Buenaventura, Vancouver was struck with the quantity and variety of the productions, not only indigenous to the country, but "appertaining to the temperate as well as to the torrid zone;—such as apples, pears, plums, figs, oranges, grapes, peaches, pomegranates, plantains, bananas, cocoanuts, sugar cane, indigo, and every useful variety of kitchen plants and medicinal roots." "It would not be easy," says Forbes, "to match such an assemblage as this elsewhere, and yet this is only a part of the fruits and vegetables now cultivated in California."

The forests are thick and abundant, filled with oaks, elms, birch, planes, and great varieties of pines; and the ranges of hills and mountains which bound the maritime portions to the northeast, shelter it from the only winds that might injure the fruits of the soil, and tend to preserve the eternal spring that seems to reign for ever over this favored land.

Immense herds of horses run wild in California; and it is said that, in some places, the horned cattle even render the country unsafe for passengers. Deer, a variety of birds, and exhaustless quantities of fish, are also found; but I will better convey to you an idea of the productions of the country by transcribing some of the tables given by Mr. Forbes, whose long residence on the Western Coasts of America, entitles him to the greatest confidence and respect Agriculture in general, is but poorly conducted, the implements being nearly the same as those that were brought by the earliest settlers; and the grains that are cultivated are only wheat, barley, maize, and frijoles, or, a bean used as the favorite food by all the natives.

The following is the whole produce on the portion of Upper California, which was cultivated in 1831:

The wheat and barley may be calculated to be worth $2 the fanega; the maize $1,50; and the fanega itself, to contain about two bushels and a half English