next to San Francisco and Nevada, the richest community in the State. In regard to the value of its real and personal property Butte ranks seventh in the list of California counties.

The quantity of land enclosed in 1865 amounted, according to assessor's estimates, to 293,222 acres, of which 74,775 were under cultivation. Of this, 19,975 acres produced 511, 170 bushels of wheat, and 53,817 acres produced 698, 227 bushels of barley. In the year 1866, 21,919 acres planted to wheat gave a yield of 231,041 bushels. The total product of this cereal in 1867, when a much greater breadth of land was planted than ever before, was estimated on good authority to have reached 800,000 bushels, very little other grain having been raised that year.

In 1867, General John Bidwell, the largest farmer in the county, had 2.000 acres sown to wheat, which gave a yield of 33,751 bushelsa much lower rate of increase than is usual in this county, the season having in some respects been unpropitious. The ordinary yield here averages about thirty bushels of wheat and forty-five of barley to the acre. General Bidwell has about 3,000 bearing fruit trees on his farm, from which he sent during the year last mentioned one hundred tons of green and fifteen tons of dried fruit to market. The value of the farming products shipped from Butte for a number of years past has amounted to $2,000,000 annually, it having some years exceeded these figures.

There are four grist mills in this county, the whole carrying ten run of stone, and capable of making about six hundred barrels of flour daily. They are kept almost constantly employed in grinding the home crop, large quantities of flour being sent into the neighboring mining districts and to points east of the Sierra. The Chico mill alone made during the year 1867 over five thousand barrels of flour, one or two of the others having ground nearly as much.

While grain raising has chiefly engrossed the attention of the agriculturalists of Butte, fruit growing and viniculture have not been wholly neglected; much wine being made and large quantities of fruit dried every season. For several years past enough raisins, of excellent quality, have also been made to supply the domestic trade.

The number of horses and mules kept for farm work and draft, and also of cattle, swine and sheep in this county, is large; wool being one of its staple exports. Difficulties in regard to land titles growing out of Mexican grants did much to retard the progress of farming here for many years, these troubles being now happily settled.

Among the products of this county, being novel in California, are

peanuts, of which three thousand two hundred bushels were grown in the year 1867. They are cultivated by the Chinese, and are remarkable for their great size and excellent flavor.

In the year 1867 twenty thousand gallons of turpentine and two thousand five hundred cases of rosin were manufactured in Butte, from the sap or raw turpentine gathered by tapping the extensive pine forests that cover the eastern part of the county. The production of these articles could easily be increased many fold were they in larger consumption on this coast.

The principal towns in Butte are Oroville, the county seat, containing about fifteen hundred inhabitants; Chico, on the Chico Creek, with a population of fourteen hundred, and the center of a flourishing farming community, and which besides enjoying a large local trade, has a considerable commerce with the mining districts of Humboldt and Idaho; and Cherokee, an active mining town, ten miles north of the county seat, with about six hundred inhabitants in and around it. Bidwell's Bar, Brush Creek, Butte Valley, Forbestown, Inskip, Thompson's Flat, Hamilton, Wyandotte and Dayton are all mining camps, or agricultural hamlets, containing from one to four hundred inhabitants each.

As stated, a large proportion of this county consists of what may be termed mineral lands; every description of gold mines and mining being found and carried on within its limits, a broad expanse of placers having been wrought here at an early day. Here are innumerable lodes of gold bearing quartz; long stretches of mesas, or table mountains, covering the channels of ancient rivers; deep banks of auriferous detritus overlying the slates, and a great many shallow diggings, some of which, though very prolific, have been but little worked, the great drawback to placer mining in many parts of this county having been a lack of water; but few ditches of any magnitude having yet been built for introducing this element into the mines. These works are fifteen in number, varying in length from two to fourteen miles. Their entire length is sixty-eight miles; total cost, $75,000. With more copious supplies of water very extensive and profitable placer mining might here be prosecuted for many years. In many rich localities, however, an obstacle to successful operations exists in the extreme level character of the surface, there being too little fall to give the water sufficient motion for effectual washing, or to carry away the tailings. Owing to this difficulty a wide area of shallow placers near Brownsville can only be worked in a small way in the wet season, when good wages can be made operating with the rocker. The gold obtained in this vicinity is remarkable for its purity, ranging from 984 to 987 in fineness, and

This is

being, consequently, worth from $20.34 to $20.40 per ounce. said to be in point of purity the finest gold found in the State, and, with the exception of the dust coming from Africa, and from one or two small localities in Australia, the finest procured in the world.

Considerable river bed mining is carried on every summer in the channels of the main Feather river, and its several forks, where these operations have been attended with better average results than at any other point in the State. About Oroville, where, for a long time, riverbar and bank mining was conducted on a large scale; at Cherokee Flat, Little Butte creek, Forbestown, and several minor localities, every branch of placer operations is engaged in, and generally with fair success, though not on a scale of such magnitude as in most of the mining counties lying further south and east.

Quartz mining during its earlier stages was attended with but indifferent results in this county. For several years past, however, this interest has been not only expanding, but making steady gains, until it has at length reached a stage rendering ultimate success no longer problematic. Cherokee, Wyandotte, Dogtown, Brown's Valley, Oregon City, Virginia, Yankee Hill, and Forbestown, are the points where quartz is being most extensively worked, and where the most of the mills are located. There are nine of these establishments in the county, carrying a total of one hundred and twenty-five stamps; a forty stamp mill having recently been erected and set in operation at Forbestown.

Several years ago a stratum of coal, of the cannel variety, was discovered near Feather river. The tests made of it at the time were said to have been satisfactory, but the deposit has not since been sufficiently developed to determine either its probable extent or value as a fuel. A bed of marble has also been found on the same stream. The material, of which there is an abundance, being of close texture and variegated colors, will no doubt prove of future value.

COLUSA COUNTY.

The name of this county is of Indian origin. It is one of the few regularly shaped counties in California, being nearly square, and has the following boundaries, viz: Tehama on the north, Butte and Sutter on the east, Yolo on the south, and Lake and Mendocino on the west. It has a length of fifty-seven miles north and south by a breadth of fortyfive miles-the western part constituting about one third of the county, being covered by the Coast Range, is hilly or mountainous. The balance, consisting of rich alluvial, or less fertile prairie land, is nearly all

level and well adapted to the growing of fruits and grain, this being almost exclusively an agricultural and stock raising county. The hills and mountains are covered with wild oats and a variety of grasses, affording rich and abundant pasturage. While the quantity of grain, raised is considerable, a great deal of stock is also kept, much of it being bred for market, there now being over twenty-five thousand head of cattle in this county. Owing to the dryness and heat of the climate, dairying is not extensively carried on. Sheep and swine raising, however, form large and profitable branches of business. The wool clip of Colusa, for 1867, exceeded three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the number of sheep being estimated at one hundred and twenty-five thousand.

Stretching for many miles along the Sycamore slough, and other streams running into the Sacramento river, are strips of tule land, amounting in the aggregate to about thirty thousand acres, the most of which could easily be reclaimed and converted into superior pasture, grain and meadow lands. The area of land enclosed in 1866 was esțimated at about one hundred and thirty thousand acres, of which more than one third was under cultivation. The amount of wheat raised that year reached about two hundred and fifty thousand bushels, the crop of the succeeding year having been much larger. Considerable quantities. of barley, oats and corn are also planted every season. A great quantity of additional land was taken up and sown to grain, mostly wheat, in 1867-8, which, should the season prove favorable, must largely increase the crop of the latter year. The number of acres of land under cultivation, in 1867, reached fifty-one thousand five hundred; of which, twenty-four thousand two hundred were sown to wheat, producing about four hundred and fifty thousand bushels, and twenty thousand one hundred and forty acres were sown to barley, producing four hundred thousand bushels.

The real and personal property of Colusa was assessed in 1866 at $2,080,830, a large proportion of it being on account of stock, all kinds of which thrive here with little care, the climate being mild and feed abundant. On the night of the 11th of January, 1868, snow fell at the town of Colusa to the depth of six inches, the heaviest fall that had occurred, with one exception, within the memory of the oldest settlers in the county. Only at long intervals does any snow ever fall in the valleys, its duration here being limited to a few hours. On the higher peaks of the Coast Range, which borders the county on the west, a little snow falls every winter; but it never reaches any great depth, nor does it lie for more than a few weeks at a time. Swine, of which there are

large numbers raised in the county, grow and fatten on the tule roots, which, furnishing a cheap and nutritious food, enables the farmer to raise these animals with little expense and trouble. Often a thousand head of hogs, or more, are shipped from this county in a single week. There are but few towns, and none of any magnitude, in this county -Colusa, the county seat, containing four or five hundred inhabitants, being the largest place in it. Princeton, eighteen miles, and Jacinto, forty miles north of Colusa, are small agricultural towns, and being, like the county seat, located on the Sacramento river, are points whence large quantities of produce are shipped every year. This county contains about four thousand five hundred inhabitants, there having been a marked increase in the population as well as in the value of property during the past two years.

There being no gold or silver mines in Colusa, it contains neither quartz mills nor extensive canals--the only water ditches being a few of small dimensions designed for irrigation. There are two steam flouring mills, carrying five run of stone, and two saw mills, the latter of small capacity, there being but little lumber made in the county. In fact, it contains no timber, with the exception of a limited amount in the Coast Range, suitable for this purpose. Many of the water courses were originally skirted by narrow belts of trees, consisting chiefly of sycamore and cottonwood; but these having been mostly cut away the settled parts of the county are but scantily supplied with fuel and fencing timber.

Deposits of sulphur, copper and cinnabar exist in the foot-hills of the Coast Range; but as the latter two have been but little worked, nothing positive can be affirmed in regard to their extent or value. The sulphur bed, in the same vicinity, about thirty miles westerly from Colusa, consists of large masses of native mineral, some of it quite pure, other portions being largely mixed with earthy matter. For the purpose of relieving it of these impurities, refining works have been erected on the spot, and considerable quantities of a good merchantable article produced. The limited demand, however, existing on this coast has caused a suspension of operations at this refinery; though such is the abundance of the raw material here, and the facility with which it can be gathered and refined, that with a home market even at moderate prices, these works could be profitably operated.

During the years 1864-65 a number of wells were bored in this section of the county in search of petroleum; none of them, however, met with any success, though several were sunk to a depth of two or three hundred feet. The incentive to these borings consisted in a