The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-07-25
The 5ailg 8nlletin,
SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1885.
A BIG FARM.

Away beyond the bayous where
the Union soldiers struggled, during
the war of the Rebellion, beyond the
country which was the retreat of
the exiled Evangelinc, in the very
southwestern corner of the state of
Louisiana lies the largest farm in
America, which is equivalent to say
ing the largest in the world. Many
of the important principalities of
Europe could be hidden within its
borders. 1t is one-third larger than
the entire state of Rhode Island. A
broad river, the Calcasien, navigable
for hundred and fifty miles, flows
through it, and here are to be found
Grand Lake, Lake Michael, Lake
Charles, and other inland seas, con-
tanning hundreds of square miles.
Some of these sheets of water are
famous for their beauty, with high
banks, pebbly shores and sandy
bottoms, and fringed with heavy
forests of dark evergreens, draped
and festooned with trailing Spanish
moss and mystic mistletoe."
The way to the great farm is easy,
as a railroad traverses it from end
to end. Taking the Morgan Rail-
road at New Orleans and transfer
ring to the Western Louisiana at
Lafayette, the traveller flies over a
rather monotonous region, broken
here and there by picturesque I'M
dulations and live oak and cotton
wood forests, and, at the end of two
hundred and twenty miles, arrives
at Lake Charles, town of three
thousand five hundred inhabitants,
overlooking large and beautiful
lake of the same name. This is in
the middle of the big farm.
Who is the big farmer? About
two years ago there suddenly APP
peared in the vicinity quiet,
unassuming, plainly-dressed man,
weighing not more than one hundred
and thirty-five pounds, with keen,
shrewd eyes and grave and thought
full business air. He hired boat
and sailed down the lake and the
river, bought horses and made an
elaborate tour of inspection. He
was a puzzle. Some thought he
was an invalid in search of health /;
others that he was crank who
wanted to start an alligator farm
and raise those insects for their now
valuable hides. He silently in
spected and disappeared. Then it
began to be whispered around that
his name was j. B. Watkins, and
that he had bought of the State and
Federal Governments farm-nearly
a million and quarter of acres
He had purchased the land stretch
ing along the Gulf of Mexico for
one hundred miles and reaching
thirty miles inland!
OF course the first thing the ma
tives did was to denounce him as a
"land-grabber." But their indig-
nation was appeased when they
learned that he had bought the land,
not to keep idle as an extortionate
Spectator, but to hold and work
and improve on a tremendous scale.
Three-quarters of the purchase was
marsh lands, subject to tidal over
flow, and he straightway took in
hand scheme for reclaiming this
worthless swamp and giving it to
pasturage and tillage. 1t has
deep alluvial soil, with stiff yellow
clay subsoil, and in its wild state is
covered with a dense vegetable
growth, revealing gorgeous color
ing of flowers.
The plan for reclamation is some
thing like that practised in Holland:
it is to dig canals and bitches, using
the dirt to build levees; then, with
automatic gates and steam-pumps,
flood or dry the land at will, making
it admirably adapted to rice, sugar,
cotton and grass. The canals thus
far built are twenty-onc feet wide
and six feet deep. Those running
from the river back into the interior
are a half mile apart, and others at
right angles to these are three-and-
a-half miles apart. This cuts the
marsh up into parallelograms of
about one thousand acres each.
Thus Holland, with its dykes and
fertile gardens, is being reproduced
in Louisiana. Thirty or forty miles
of canals have already been dug.
and these are progressing at the
rate of six hundred yards every
twenty-four hours. No less than
three thousand acres have been
seeded to rice this spring. Thirty
two boats have been built, including
steamboats,, tugs and yachts; and
steam-plows, harrows, ditchers and
monster dredges have been brought
from England.
The method of blowing is unique
and original. The land is cultivated
as well as reclaimed entirely by
steam power floated in these canals.