But what surprised me more was to find that apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, apricots--all the fruits--do well on this soil.

With us I think the pear would not do well on peat; but here it withstood last year's flood, which broke a levee and overflowed Mr.Bigelow's farm, and the trees do not appear to have suffered.

He had also wind-breaks of osier willow, which of course grows rapidly, and had been a source of profit to him in, yielding cuttings for sale.
Timothy does not do well on tule land, as its roots do not push down deep enough, and the surface of such light soils always dries up rapidly.

Mr.
Bigelow told me that he once sowed alfalfa in February with wheat, and took off forty-five bushels of wheat per acre, and a ton and a half of alfalfa later; and pastured (in a thirty-acre field) twenty-five head of stock till Christmas on the same land, after the hay was cut.
They have one great advantage on the tule lands--they can put in their crops at any time from November to the last of June.
It was very curious to sit on the veranda at the farm-house, after dinner, with a high levee immediately in front of us almost hiding the Sacramento River, and with a broad canal--the inner ditch--full of fresh water, running along the boundary as far as the eye could reach, the level of the levee broken occasionally by tide-gates.

The prospect would have been monotonous had we not had at one side the lovely mountain range of which Mount Diablo is the prominent peak.