The Passing Stranger, However, Is Always Welcomed And
Supplied With The Best The Home Affords, And Around The Fireside,
While He Smokes His Pipe, Very Little Encouragement Is Required To
Bring Forth The Story Of The Farmer's Life - Hunting, Mining, Fighting,
In The Early Indian Times, Et.
Only the few who are married hope to
return to California to educate their children, and the ease with
which money is made renders the fulfillment of these hopes
comparatively sure.
After dwelling thus long on the farms of this dry wonderland, my
readers may be led to fancy them of more importance as compared with
the unbroken fields of Nature than they really are. Making your way
along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south,
seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation.
The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and
more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to
ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand. No singing
water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in - mountain and valley
alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare; and though, perhaps,
traveling a well-worn road to a gold or silver mine, and supplied with
repeated instructions, you can scarce hope to find any human
habitation from day to day, so vast and impressive is the hot, dusty,
alkaline wildness.
But after riding some thirty or forty miles, and while the sun may be
sinking behind the mountains, you come suddenly upon signs of
cultivation. Clumps of willows indicate water, and water indicates a
farm. Approaching more nearly, you discover what may be a patch of
barley spread out unevenly along the bottom of a flood bed, broken
perhaps, and rendered less distinct by boulder piles and the fringing
willows of a stream. Speedily you can confidently say that the grain
patch is surely such; its ragged bounds become clear; a sand-roofed
cabin comes to view littered with sun-cracked implements and with an
outer girdle of potato, cabbage, and alfalfa patches.
The immense expanse of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which
these hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in
size. The smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a
pecuniary view. On the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a
jolly Irishman who informed me that his income from fifty acres,
reinforced by a sheep range on the adjacent hills, was from seven to
nine thousand dollars per annum. His irrigating brook is about four
feet wide and eight inches deep, flowing about two miles per hour.
On Duckwater Creek, Nye County, Mr. Irwin has reclaimed a tule swamp
several hundred acres in extent, which is now chiefly devoted to
alfalfa. On twenty-five acres he claims to have raised this year
thirty-seven tons of barley. Indeed, I have not yet noticed a meager
crop of any kind in the State.
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