The superintendent is accompanied by aids, furnished with all the necessary tools and materials for making repairs speedily, so as to reduce delays to the least possible minimum. Under this arrangement the earth is easily conquered by this mighty army of ploughers, who move forward to the music of rattling machines and the tramp of horses. The process of harrowing an extensive wheat-field is like that of ploughing, the plough being exchanged for the harrow. The superintendent, on horseback, leads the harrowing cavalcade, as the general does his army, and between the tramp of steeds and tear of harrows, the soil is pretty thoroughly pulverized. Workmen say there is peculiar fascination in this method of subduing Western land on a large scale.
Drudgery becomes no part of the labor.
Nor do they tire of the business as Eastern farmers, working early and late to support their families, often tire. They behold the reward of labor in the rich, loamy furrows, and are satisfied. It is three and four months before harvest, yet they see the thousands of acres of waving grain, the grandest spectacle upon which their eyes ever feasted. Look out for eight, ten, or twenty miles, as far as the average human sight can pierce the distance, and view the luxuriant, stalwart grain swaying in the breeze and glittering in the golden sunlight like the coruscations of a soaring imagination, and if anything is lacking to complete the sublimity of the picture, compute the pile of golden eagles, or greenbacks, the alchemy of harvest will transmute into the pockets of the lucky owners of these Western bonanzas. We have heretofore alluded to the fact that the seasons in California are so favorable to putting in grain that one man can put in much more there than in countries where the seasons are less favorable.