known to geographer or photographer. Up here in the Sierra Nevada, 6,220 feet above the level of the sea, the air is of wondrous clearness. Clouds gather on the mountain crests all about, and floating overhead cast shadows into the unfathomed depths. The waves are of changing hues. Yellow and emerald and indigo tints are here, giving the water-color artist rapturous and busy Artistic hours. But for direct picturing of the marvelous and Effects. rapidly changing combinations of sunlight and shade, the

Nature's

camera is most effective. The lake is twenty-three miles long and thirteen wide-a crystal mirror in the rugged Sierra setting. Around the shores of the lake are many summer hotels and famed camping resorts. Into the lake run trout streams of unfailing delight to the sportsman. High in the mountains all about are other deep-water lakes of rare beauty.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. California's Great Central Basin-The Great
Producing District of the State — A Region of Wondrous Fertility — A Vast
Granary-Important Stock and Dairy Interests - The Most Important
Raisin District in the World - A Treasure Bed of Horticulture - Extensive
Oil Fields-Vast Timber and Mineral Lands-An Inexhaustible Water
Supply - An Irrigation System of Unequalled Magnitude-What Professor
Elwood Mead Says-More Irrigable Land Than Watered by the Nile—
Stockton, the Delta City-Profits In Table Grapes-Great Dam at La
Grange-Porterville Oranges-Fresno and Its Varied Resources-Yosemite
Valley and the National Reserve-In the Bret Harte Country.

Royal the reaches of wheat in the valley!

Abundance has blessed the wide wastes of the plain,
And hosts of the strong-headed harvesters rally
At dawn-flush to garner the glittering grain.

Full hang thy orchards with fruitage of summer,
Thy citrons 'mid blossoms bless winter and spring,
But autumn, the radiant year cycle's last comer,

Bears, clustered in purple, the grape which is king.
-CHARLES Keeler.

L

OOKING at the topographical map of California, the curious formation of the mountain ranges attracts the eye. The towering Sierra Nevada form the eastern border and boundary, while circling about in the form of an inverted letter C are the mountains of the Coast Range, bounded on the north by the Siskiyou and on the south by Tehachapi. Enclosed within these mountain ranges is the great interior valley of California, the north half the Sacramento, the south half the San Joaquin. Properly speaking, it is one great valley, the natural drainage from both centering in the Sacramento river, flowing westerly into San Francisco bay and out into the Pacific.

Climatic conditions in both Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys are much alike, but to the resident each valley has its special characteristics that make it of peculiar value. No old resident of the San Joaquin, for

The Great

Interior

Valley of

California.

Like the Valley of

example, will admit for a moment that anywhere on earth exists a country superior to that about his home, and the Sacramento valley man holds equally positive opinions.

This whole valley of California has been compared, the Nile. and justly so, with the vast valley of the Nile, where the scientists and engineers of England have been at work solving the greatest engineering problem of modern times. Quoting a recent writer, A. J. Wells:

Rich Mountain

"Here is the great sea valley of California, and there is the valley of the Nile. That is ancient; this is modern. That is sown with forgotten generations; this is virgin soil, still gay with the wild flowers of its youth. There the old and the new civilizations meet, and the regeneration of the country through its agriculture is begun; here the methods of to-day wait to renew the wealth and increase the population of a valley that will one day be as famous as the valley of the Nile, and will maintain, in latter-day comfort, as dense a population."

This valley of the San Joaquin is about two hundred Treasure Beds. and fifty miles long and averages sixty miles in width, and comprises a total area of nearly 34,000 square miles. Its counties, including the foothill and mountain regions that drain naturally into the valley, comprise Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne. The most northern county of the valley is Amador; the most southern, Kern. In the mountains are rich mines. and richer treasure beds undeveloped. In the valley are vast areas of fertile soil, much of it well cultivated, but acres upon acres are waiting for the energy of the settler. Raisins, the equal of any the world produces, center about Fresno. Throughout the valley from San Joaquin to Kern are vast ranches producing wheat that is shipped from tide-water to the grain markets of the world.

Kern county is the center of the great petroleum industry of comparatively recent development. All along the foothills are sheltered regions where semi-tropical fruits-oranges, lemons, olives and figs,-grow luxuriantly and ripen so early as to give these regions a marked ad

WHERE RAILWAY AND RIVER MEET. THE WAREHOUSE AND MILLING DISTRICT OF STOCKTON.

Among Orange

vantage from the standpoint of the shipper who wishes to reach Eastern markets before rival sections send their shipments.

Around Porterville in Tulare county there is a large Groves. area of orange groves, and shipments of oranges from Porterville alone last season (1902-1903), amounted to 367 carloads. Throughout the valley are well-tilled farms (which to every Californian are known as ranches), producing fruits and other products, including prunes, peaches, apricots, figs, olives, plums, pears, berries, wine, oranges, lemons, lumber, wheat, barley, corn, melons, potatoes, wool, alfalfa, cattle, sheep, horses, poultry.

Development of Electric

All these products tell of the fertility of the valley, but with more people these products of this fertile district are capable of vast increase. Down from the Sierra flow rivers and creeks fed from the glaciers of snow-capped mountains, giving an unfailing water supply which needs only to be diverted to make fruitful large sections of now unproductive lands. Professor Elwood Mead, the government expert, now associated with the University of California, whose recent report is most interesting, says of the great valley, that the water supply available there, "ought to make of it the Egypt of the western hemisphere. Within a radius of five miles I saw every product of the temperate and semi-tropical zones which I could call to mind." And he adds that there are more acres of irrigable land in the San Joaquin valley than are now watered in Egypt from the Nile, where agriculture alone supports more than five million people."

Not only is the water of these fast-flowing streams Power. of value for irrigation purposes, but for the development of power, and principally electric power, for manufactures. Already several such projects are begun and a number of progressive mining companies are using power obtained from this unfailing source.

From Electra, on the Mokelumne river, forty-five miles from Stockton, a power line has been constructed to San Francisco, one hundred and forty-eight miles distant. The plants serving this line have a capacity of 15,000