much unsurveyed
Government land, to which hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle are
annually driven by the graziers of the plain, who thus save their own
pastures, and are able to carry a much larger number of sheep than they
otherwise would.

Moreover, nearness to the railroad is an important advantage for the
sheep-farmer; and I found that the most enterprising and intelligent sheep
men in the northern counties send their wool direct by railroad to the
Eastern States, instead of shipping it to San Francisco to be sold.

Finally, much of the land now obtainable for grazing in the Sacramento
Valley, at prices in some cases not too dear for grazing purposes, is of
a quality which will make it valuable agricultural land as soon as the
valley begins to fill up; and thus, aside from the profit from the sheep,
the owner may safely reckon upon a large increase in the value of his
land. This can not be said of much of the grazing land of the southern
coast counties, which is mountainous and broken, and fit only for grazing.

Of course I speak here of the average lands only. There are large tracts
or ranchos in the southern coast counties, such as the Lampoe rancho
of Hollester & Diblee, and lands in the Salinas Valley, which are
exceptionally fine, and to which what I have said of the coast panchos
generally does not apply.

[Illustration: ANOTHER COAST-VIEW, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.]

CHAPTER V.

THE CHINESE AS LABORERS AND PRODUCERS.

As I crossed from Oakland to San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon last
July, there were on the ferry-boat a number of Chinese. They were decently
clad, quiet, clean, sat apart in their places in the lower part of the
boat conversing together, and finally walked off the boat when she came to
land as orderly as though they had been Massachusetts Christians.

There were also on the boat a number of half-grown and full-grown white
boys, some of whom had been fishing, and carried their long rods with
them. These were slouchy, dirty, loud-voiced, rude; and, as they passed
off the boat, I noticed that with their long rods they knocked the hats of
the Chinese off their heads, or punched them in the back, every effort of
this kind being rewarded with boisterous laughter from their companions.
Nor did they confine their annoyance entirely to the Chinese, for they
jostled and pushed their way out through the crowd of men and women very
much as a gang of pickpockets on a Third Avenue car in