THE TULE LANDS AND LAND DRAINAGE.
While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these
go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in
some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres.
If you will take, on a map of California, Stockton, Sacramento, and San
Francisco for guiding points, you will see that a large part of the land
lying between these cities is marked "swamp and overflowed." Until within
five or six years these lands attracted but little attention. It was known
that they were extremely fertile, but it was thought that the cost and
uncertainty of reclaiming them were too great to warrant the enterprise.
Of late, however, they have been rapidly bought up by capitalists, and
their sagacity has been justified by the results on those tracts which
have been reclaimed.
These Tule lands--the word is pronounced as though spelled "toola"--are
simply deposits of muck, a mixture of the wash or sediment brought down
by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers with the decayed vegetable matter
resulting from an immense growth of various grasses, and of the reed
called the "tule," which often grows ten feet high in a season, and decays
every year. The Tule lands are in part the low lands along the greater
rivers, but in part they are islands, lying in the delta of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin rivers, and separated from each other by deep, narrow
"sloughs," or "slews" as they are called--branches of these rivers, in
fact. Before reclamation they are overflowed commonly twice a year--in the
winter, when the rains cause the rivers to rise; and again in June, when
the melting of the snows on the mountains brings another rise. You may
judge of the extent of this overflowed land by the following list of the
principal Tule Islands:
Acres.
Robert's Island.......................67,000
Union Island..........................50,000
Grizzly Island........................15,000
Sherman Island........................14,000
Grand Island..........................17,000
Ryer Island...........................11,800
Staten Island..........................8,000
Bacon Island...........................7,000
Brannan Island.........................7,000
Bouldin Island.........................5,000
Mandeville Island......................5,000
Venice Island..........................4,000
Tyler Island...........................4,000
Andros Island..........................4,000
Twitchell Island.......................3,600
Sutter Island..........................3,000
Joyce Island...........................1,500
Rough and Ready Island.................1,500
Long Island............................1,000
In all...........................217,400
These are the largest islands; but you must understand that on the
mainland, along the Sacramento and its affluents, there is a great deal of
similar land, probably at least twice as much more, perhaps three times.
The swamp and overflowed lands were given by Congress to the State; and
the State has, in its turn, virtually given them to private persons. It
has sold them for one dollar per acre, of which twenty per cent. was paid
down, or twenty cents per acre; and this money, less some small charges
for recording the transfer and for inspecting the reclamation, is
returned by the State to the purchaser if he, within three years after the
purchase, reclaims his land. That is to say, the State gives away the land
on condition that it shall be reclaimed and brought into cultivation.
During a number of years past enterprising individuals have undertaken
to reclaim small tracts on these islands by diking them, but with not
encouraging success, and it was not until a law was passed empowering the
majority of owners of overflowed lands in any place to form a reclamation
district, choose a Board of Reclamation, and levy a tax upon all the land
in the district, for building and maintaining the dikes or levees that
these lands really came into use.
[Illustration: A WATER JAM OF LOGS.]
Now, this work of draining is going on so fast that this year nearly six
hundred miles of levee will be completed among the islands alone, not
to speak of reclamation districts on the main-land. There seems to be
a general determination to do the work thoroughly, the high floods of
1871-72 having shown the farmers and land-owners that they must build high
and strong levees, or else lose all, or at least much, of their labor and
outlay. During the spring of 1872 I saw huge breaks in some of the levees,
which overflowed lands to the serious damage of farmers, for not only is
the crop of the year lost, but orchards and vineyards, which flourish on
the Tule lands, perished or were seriously injured by the waters.
Chinese labor is used almost entirely in making the levees. An engineer
having planned the work, estimates are made, and thereupon Chinese foremen
take contracts for pieces at stipulated rates, and themselves hire their
countrymen for the actual labor. This subdivision, to which the perfect
organization of Chinese labor readily lends itself, is very convenient.
The engineer or master in charge of the work deals only with the
Chinese foremen, pays them for the work done, and exacts of them the due
performance of the contract.
The levee stuff is taken from the inside; thus the ditch is inside of the
levee, and usually on the outside is a space of low marsh, which presently
fills with willow and cotton-wood. You may sail along the river or slough,
therefore, for miles, and see only occasional evidences of the embankment.
The soil is usually a tough turf, full of roots, which is very cheaply cut
out with an instrument called a "tule-knife," and thrown up on the levee,
where it seems to bind well, though one would not think it would. At
frequent intervals are self-acting tide-gates for drainage; these are made
of the redwood of the coast, which does not rot in the water. The rise and
fall of the tides is about six feet. The levees have been in some places
troubled with beaver, which, however, are now hunted for their fur, and
will not long be troublesome. There is no musk-rat--an animal which would
do serious damage here. The tule-rat lives on roots on the land, but is
not active or strong enough to be injurious.
The levee is usually from six to eight feet broad on top, with the inside
sloping; but I was told that experience had shown that the outside should
be perpendicular. It is not unusual for parts of a levee to sink down,
but I could hear of no case of capsizing. The Levee Board of a district
appoints levee-masters, whose duty it is to look after the condition
of the work, and on the islands I visited there were gangs of Chinamen
engaged in repairing and heightening the embankments.
You land at a wharf, and, standing on top of the levee, you see before you
usually the house and other farm buildings, set up on piles, for security
against a break and overflow; and beyond a great track of level land, two
or three or five feet below the level of the levee, and, if it has but
lately been reclaimed, covered with the remnants of tules and of grass
sods.
When the levee is completed, and the land has had opportunity to drain
a little, the first operation is to burn it over. This requires time and
some care, for it is possible to burn too deep; and in some parts the fire
burns deep holes if it is not checked. If the land is covered with dry
tules, the fire is set so easily that a single match will burn a thousand
acres, the strong trade-wind which blows up the river and across these
lands carrying the fire rapidly. If the dry tules have been washed off,
a Chinaman is sent to dig holes through the upper sod; after him follows
another, with a back-load of straw wisps, who sticks a wisp into each
hole, lights it with a match, and goes on. At this rate, I am told, it
cost on one island only one hundred dollars to burn fifteen hundred acres.
When this work is done you have an ash-heap, extremely disagreeable to
walk over, and not yet solid enough to bear horses or oxen. Accordingly,
the first crop is put on with sheep. First the tract is sowed, usually
with a coffee-mill sower or hand machine, and, I am told, at the rate of
about thirty pounds of wheat to the acre, though I believe it would be
better to sow more thickly. Then comes a band or flock of about five
hundred sheep. These are driven over the surface in a compact body, and at
no great rate of speed, and it is surprising how readily they learn what
is expected of them, and how thoroughly they tramp in the seed. Dogs are
used in this work to keep the sheep together, and they expect to "sheep
in," as they call it, about sixteen acres a day with five hundred animals,
giving these time besides to feed on the levee and on spare land.
Tule land thus prepared has actually yielded from forty to sixty bushels
of wheat per acre. It does not always do so, because, as I myself saw,
it is often badly and irregularly burned over, and probably otherwise
mismanaged. The crop is taken off with headers, as is usual in this State.
For the second year's crop the land is plowed. A two-share gang-plow is
used, with a seat for the plowman. It is drawn by four horses, who have to
be shod with broad wooden shoes, usually made of ash plank, nine by eleven
inches, fastened to the iron shoes of the horse by screws.
The soil does not appear to be sour, and no doubt the ashes from the
burning off do much to sweeten it where it needs that. But several years
are needed to reduce the ground to its best condition for tillage, and the
difference in this respect between newly-burned or second-crop lands and
such matured farms as that of Mr. Bigelow on Sherman Island--who has been
there eight or nine years--is very striking.
It seemed to me that the farmers and land-owners with whom I spoke knew
"for certain" but very little about the best ways to manage these lands,
and that the advice of a thorough scientific agriculturist, like Professor
Johnson of Yale, would be very valuable to them. Now, they know only that
the land when burned over will bear large crops of wheat; and, of course,
in all practical measures for economically putting in and taking off a
wheat crop the Californian needs no instructor.
The soil seemed to me, so far as they dig into it--say six feet deep--to
be, not peat, but a mass of undecayed or but partly decayed roots,
strongly adhering together, so that the upper part of a levee, taken of
course from the lowest part of the ditch, lay in firm sods or tussocks.
These, however, seem to decay pretty rapidly on exposure to the air.
The drainage is not usually deeper than four feet, and in places the
water-level was but three feet below the surface. The newly reclaimed land
being very light, suffers from the dry season, and is often irrigated,
which, as it lies below the river-level, can be quickly and cheaply done.
Sherman Island was one of the earliest to be reclaimed, and there I
visited the fine farm of Mr. Bigelow--a New Hampshire man, I believe, and
apparently a thorough farmer. He has lived on tule land ten years, and
his fields were consequently in the finest condition. Here I saw a
three-hundred-acre field of wheat, as fine as wheat could be. He thought
he should get about forty-five bushels per acre this year. He had got, he
told me, between sixty-five and seventy bushels per acre, and without any
further labor the next year brought him from the same fields fifty-two
bushels per acre as a "volunteer" or self-seeded crop.
Here I saw luxuriant red clover and blue grass, and he had also a field
of carrots, which do well on this alluvial bottom, it seems. 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. But the great expanse of clean fields,
level as a billiard-table, and in as fine tilth as though this was a model
farm, was a delight to the eye, too.
It may interest grape-growers in the East to be told that of what we call
"foreign grapes," the Muscat of Alexandria succeeds best in these moist,
peaty lands. It is the market grape here. Trees have not grown to a great
size on the tule lands, but bees are very fond of the wild-flowers which
abound in the unreclaimed marshes, and, having no hollow trees to build
in, they adapt themselves to circumstances by constructing their hives on
the outside or circumference of trees.
[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD, OREGON.]
Fencing costs here about three hundred and twenty dollars per mile. The
redwood posts are driven into the ground with mauls. Farm laborers receive
in the tules thirty dollars per month and board if they are white men, but
one dollar a day and feed themselves, where they are Chinese.
On Twitchell Island I found an experiment making in ramie and jute, Mr.
Finch, formerly of Haywards, having already planted twenty-six acres of
ramie, and intending to put seven acres into jute, for which he had the
plants all ready, raised in a canvas-covered inclosure. He raised ramie
successfully last year, and sold, he told me, from one-tenth of an acre,
two hundred and sixty three pounds of prepared ramie, for fifteen cents
per pound. He used, to dress it, a machine made in California, which
several persons have assured me works well and cheaply, a fact which ramie
growers in Louisiana may like to know; for the chief obstacle to ramie
culture in this country has been, so far, the lack of a cheap and
rapidly-working machine for its preparation. It struck me that Mr. Finch's
experiment with ramie and jute would promise better were it not made on
new land from which I believe only one crop had been taken.
When these tule lands have been diked and drained, they are sold for from
twenty to twenty-five dollars per acre. Considering the crops they bear,
and their nearness to market--ships could load at almost any of the
islands--I suppose the price is not high; but a farmer ought to be sure
that the levees are high enough, and properly made. To levee them costs
variously, from three to twelve dollars per acre.
The tule lands which lie on the main-land, and which are equally rich with
the islands, are usually ditched and diked for less than six dollars per
acre; and this sum is regarded, I believe, by the State Commissioners
as the maximum which the owners are allowed to borrow on reclamation
land-bonds for the purpose of levee building.
I spoke awhile back of the existence of beavers in the tule country. Elk
and grizzly bears used also to abound here, and I am told that on the
unreclaimed lands elk are still found, though the grizzlies have gone to
the mountains. One of the curiosities hereabouts is the ark, or floating
house, used by the hunters, which you see anchored or moored in the
sloughs: in these they live, using a small boat when they go ashore to
hunt, and floating from place to place with the tide. On one of these arks
I saw a magnificent pair of elk horns from an animal recently shot.
[Illustration: COAST VIEW, MENDOCINO COUNTY.]