Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-05-23
LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA,
To the Editor of the Kennebec Journal:
SEAPsyIIIr Car Nav 1Otb 1871

10 me EdNor OF Inc hennetec journal:
SEARsvILLE, CAL, May 10th, 1871.
In travelling from the San Jose valley to
| this place, we strike the Sierra Moreno range
of mountains near the Pacific coast. As they
loom up they appear as grand and beautiful as
the everlasting Alps, SO frequently described
by the historian. You would readily suppose
you had arrived in the region where mytholo-
gy says the heather attempted to scale the
battlements of Heaven by piling Ossa on
Pelion. just imagine thousand such noun
tains as Blue, katahdin and Abram, in the
lovely old State of Maine, grouped together,
and you get slight idea of these. | am told
the similarity continues as you travel across
the State. In order to make travelling COM
modious the highways and thoroughfares en-
circle these elevated regions, on regular grades
of given number of feet to the hundred,
so that in going to a town lying in straight
line ten miles distant, you may be obliged to
travel, on your devious and winding way,
some twenty or thirty ere you reach it,-not
unlike the frog in the well that jumped up
three feet and fell back two. Still, this is the
land where farmers reap their golden grain,
and pasture their ''catte on thousand hills
Vegetation grows in luXuriant abundance from
base to apex, the soil is dark CHI adobe form
two to ten feet in depth. The grasses, wild
oats and peculiar kind of clover denominat-
ed volunteer, Chat is. die out and seed them
selves annually, die in Jaly come again in
early winter, say about Christmas, are as
nutritious in dry as in green state, and
are grazed the year round, no frosts or SHOWS
to prevent. The climate here is peculiar
wet for several months and then a continuous
drouth. Wheat, barley, and oats sown from
the middle of December to middle of March,
mature for the harvest very nearly at the same
period of time. Mills run by water are sell
dom known or used here. Portable steam
power does the saving, grinding and thresh-
ing. Instead of lumber being hauled to the
mill, the steam mill is hauled to that, and
after it is sawed and seasoned is sent to mar
ket. The trees are perfect monarchs. Red |
wood and bastard pine, not half as good as
Maine, are some of them two hundred feet
in height and fifteen feet in diameter at the |
butt, and will scale from fifty to sixty thous-
and feet of lumber. Penobscet and kennebec |
forests are thrown into the shade in compare |
son. Redwood lasts and resembles cedar and
is nearly the main reliance for fencing.
Farm operations in California are widely |
different from those of New England. Here |
they have ranches from five hundred to five
thousand acres. In San joaquin valley the |
firm of Miller and Luxham have a ranch on
which they keep eighty thousand head of neat !
cattle, and at the present time many of them
are dying with starvation in consequence of
the severe drouth which is now severely dam
aging the crops. Steele Brothers, of Pisca
dero, keep dairy of twelve hundred cows;
at this ranch the great Sanitary cheese of 900 |
pounds weight was made in 1868. The near
est neighbors are some half day S journey apart !
in many sections. Whilst in New England |
the country is dotted over with the neat little !
farm cottages with their hundred acre lots, a
man here must possess fortune to purchase F,
his ranch, OK involve himself almost hopeless |
ly in debt; there he can easily pay for his
farm and be comfortably independent in ten
years, with school houses and churches in his
neighborhood, whilst here the Sabbath is
made a sort OF secular holiday, and desecrat-
ed by gin-shops and gambling saloons which
are as numerous as the frogs of Egypt. From
that large crop and ready market will make
man a fortune, but a poor one, if he is
heavily involved, will send him to perdition
the hazard is too great for the Puritanc New
Highlander to run. Hired laborers in this
State have poor show to gain competence,
and Chinese labor makes it still worse.
One of my old neighbors, Robinson j.
Weeks, Esq, of Winthrop, more fortunate
than many, emigrated to this place some
twenty years ago, and by indomitable perse-
verance succeeded through vexatious litigation
in driving off the squalters and thereby obtain
ing ranch of 5000 acres. Thinking that
your readers may be interested in the welfare
of Kennebec boy, will just jot down Tor
novelty a memorandum of the stock and
products of his ranch for a yearly general av-
erage viz: 800 head of neat cattle including
100 cows and six yoke of oxen (seldom used,
90 horses including work and breeding, 100
swine, 800 sheep, sheared twice year, beside
the poultry which is here a source of great
profit. Sows 800 acres of wheat, 200 of bar
ley and oats, cuts 100 tons hay, plants 100
acres OF corn, potatoes, beets &C., making his
grain crop 10000 bushels, which with the
other products in market would make no
mean fortune after deducting literally for out
LAYS. Still l would say let mt th;s al,urao ,o
from the region of his eastern home; the ex-
eeption must not be taken for the rule, think
ing that fortune may be jumped into in
sfanter, for nine times out of ten he will fail.
and disappointment will bring him down, he
soon looses self-respect, forgets the parental
roof, becomes sceptical, and his grosser ma
ture predominates amid the surrounding i'm
moralities. Too many young men, mechanics