The climate, with its long dry summer, is very favorable to the drying and curing of every fruit: no expensive houses, no ovens or other machinery, are needed.

The day is not distant when the great Sacramento plain will be a vast orchard, and the now unoccupied foot-hills will furnish a large part of the raisins consumed in the United States.

For the present the population is scant, and cattle, horses, and especially sheep, roam over hundreds of thousands of acres of soil which needs only industrious farmers to make it bloom into a garden.
[Illustration: TRAINING A VINE.] The farmer in this State is a person of uncommon resources and ingenuity.
I think he uses his brains more than our Eastern farmers.

I do not mean to say that he lives better, for he does not.

His house is often shabby, even though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without milk; he buys his butter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and bread and mutton are the chief part of his living, both being universally good here.