Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/234

224 past; barns with their roofs a mile distant; houses without any; outhouses and dwellings with a watermark up to the second story—and in many localities no dwellings at all, where commodious and comfortable tenements had been—all told of the presence and the power of the waters of Sacramento when charged with fullness on its way to the ocean. It seems to me that a system of high levees is the only thing to reclaim hundreds of acres of fine swamp land along the Sacramento, and to prevent the repetition of these disastrous results, which made the people poor and retard the growth of the State. Sacramento is already surrounded by a high levee which may protect it another season; but the levee should begin at Marysville and extend to Sacramento. It will, of course, be expensive, but it will repay the labor in the end.

Between Marysville and Sacramento we passed the large and magnificent claim called "Sutter's Ranch," though not under a high state of cultivation. The old pioneer is now poor, but his friends are sufficiently zealous in his behalf to see that his wants go not unsupplied. One can not pass over this region and at the same time observe how rapidly the Sacramento River is being obstructed by the immense deposits of sand and sediment which its current is daily bringing down, thus forming bars and deltas destined not only to intercept but probably to suspend at no distant day navigation to its upper waters,—without feeling the pressing importance of a railroad connection between Sacramento and the more northern regions of California. Already are parties out viewing and prospecting a road through Noble's Pass, where it is proposed by some to carry the Pacific railroad line.

That California will be covered with a network of railways is only a question of time, and that time determined