the straw being left to be burned down as a fertilizer. Fancy a
Western prairie, substitute golden grain for corn, and you have
before you the California harvest; for four hundred miles this
valley extends, and it is wheat from one end to the other--nothing
but wheat. Granted sufficient rain in the rainy season--that is,
from November till February--and the husbandman seeks nothing more;
Nature does all the rest, and a bountiful harvest is a certainty. In
some years there is a scarcity of rain, but to provide against even
this sole remaining contingency the rivers have but to be properly
used for irrigation; with this done, the wheat crop of the Pacific
coast will outstrip in value, year after year, all the gold and
silver that can be mined. Douglas Jerrold's famous saying applies to
no other land so well as to this, for it indeed needs only "to be
tickled with a hoe to smile with a harvest."

We reached Oakland, the Jersey City of San Francisco, on time to
the minute; the ferry-boat starts, and there lies before us the
New York of the Pacific: but instead of the bright sparkling city
we had pictured, sinking to rest with its tall spires suffused by
the glories of the setting sun, imagine our surprise when not even
our own smoky Pittsburgh could boast a denser canopy of smoke. A
friend who had kindly met us upon arrival at Oakland tried to
explain that this was not all smoke; it was mostly fog, and a
peculiar wind which sometimes had this effect; but we could
scarcely be mistaken upon that point. No, no, Mr. O'B., you may
know all about "Frisco," the Chinese, the mines, and the Yosemite,
but do allow me to know something about smoke. We reached our
hotel, from the seven days' trip, and, after a bath and a good
dinner with agreeable company, were shown as much of the city as
it was possible to see before the "wee short hour ayont the