It is geographical¹ courtesy merely, to treat of intramontane California as a valley; it is in reality a vast, rolling plain. Several little kingdoms of Europe could be tucked away in it. North and south it has no natural line of demarcation other than the rivers meeting for their single assault upon the sea, but its diversity deserves the double name. They make, the Sacramento rushing from the wooded north and the sluggish³ San Joaquin, one of the most interesting waterways of the world. I should say they made, for of the San Joaquin one must be able to speak in the past also, to understand it. One must have seen it before man had tamed it and taught it, supine as a lioness in the sun.  
To arrive at a proper feeling for the continuity of the great central plain, it must be approached [128] from the south, by way of the old Tejon Pass, up from San Fernando, or down the Tehachapi grade where the railroad loops and winds through the confluence⁴ of the Coast Range with the Sierra Nevada. Here the hills curve graciously about the vast oval of the lower San Joaquin. The downthrow of the mountain, stippled⁵ with sage-brush, gives way to tawny⁶ sand glistening⁷ here and there with white patches of alkali, mottled with dark blocks of irrigated⁸ land. Its immensity is obscured by the haze⁹ of heat.
 
One is reduced to the figures of the real estate "booster" for terms of proportion. That modest checkering of green, hours away to the left, is a forty-mile field of alfalfa; beyond it lie the vineyards that in less than a quarter of a century relegated¹⁰ Spain to a second place in the raisin¹¹ industry of the world. This is the San Joaquin of to-day and to-morrow. The white-tilted vans of the Argonauts saw it as one vast, overlapping¹² field of radiant corollas, blue of lupins, phacelias, nemophilias, gold of a hundred packed species of composite. Wet years it is still possible for the settler in the unirrigated districts to wake some morning to blossomy lakes of sky-blueness in the hollows; from San Emigdio in the Temblors, I [129] have seen, across the whole width of the valley, the smouldering poppy fires along the bluffs¹³ of Kern River. On the mesa below Tejon the moon-white gilia that the children call "evening snow" unfurls its musky-scented drifts mile after mile. But the prevailing¹⁵ note of the San Joaquin is tawny russet; gold it will be in the season, resplendent as those idols¹⁶ which the Incas overlaid yearly with fresh-beaten leaf, and in September the barrancas above Bakersfield and Visalia as yellow as brass¹⁷, but all up and down the hill-rimmed hollow is every lion-coloured tint¹⁹ contending still with the thin belts of planted orchard²⁰.
 
Twenty-five years of cultivation²¹ have served to shift the lines of greenness but not greatly to modify the desert key. Once it was all massed in the tulares which fringed the series of lakes and connecting sloughs²², continuing northward²³ from the lowest point of the San Joaquin. Kern, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, Merced, and Tuolumne, mighty²⁴ rivers, and a hundred lesser²⁵ singing streams fed it. Elk²⁶ by thousands ramped²⁷ in its reedy borders. It was a haven²⁸ of nesting water-birds. Whole islands were populated by pelicans²⁹, repairing there annually³⁰ for the strange, sidling wing-dances that attend their mating. Blue herons nested in the [130] tulares; they could be seen trailing their long dangly³¹ legs for hours above the shallows. Indians paddled in their frail³² balsas, built of papery, dry reeds, down intricate water-lanes in which white men venturing, lost themselves and were mazed³⁴ to madness. Malaria³⁵ of a surpassing virulence³⁶ rode up and down that country on the "tule fogs." Even yet it is the dread³⁷ of the cities of the plain to find themselves beleaguered³⁸ by the thick, ghost-white mists that at long intervals³⁹ roll along the ground, retaking the ancient marshes⁴⁰.
 
Into this potential opulence⁴¹ the cattleman precipitated⁴² himself. He bought—it is more exact to say he acquired—vast acreage of Spanish grants; along the rim¹⁸ of the Coast Ranges, territory equal to principalities was given over to long-horned, lean herds⁴³. All about the old beach-line of the San Joaquin may still be seen the remnant of the cattle ranches⁴⁴, low formless houses with purlieus of pomegranate and pampas grass and black figs⁴⁵, and the high, stockaded, acrid-smelling corrals, to mark the receding⁴⁶ waves of the cattle industry. On the Sierra side the guttered⁴⁷ mesas, the hoof-worn foothills advertise the devastation⁴⁸ of the wandering flocks. Early in the 'sixties these appeared, little, long-armed French and Basques, [131] with hungry hordes⁴⁹ of sheep at their heels, pasturing on the public lands. They ate into the roots of the lush grass and left the quick rains to cut the soil. The wool in the hand was always worth the next season's feed to the sheep-herder.
 
Never was a land so planned for the uses of man, its shielding mountains, its deep alluvial⁵⁰ terraces sloping gently to the sun. Men read it in the hieroglyphic⁵¹ the glistening waters spelled between the dark patches of the tulares, but it took some experimenting to read the message aright.
 
After the cattle and the flocks came the wheat. Up from the meeting waters the land billowed with grain. Owners buckled⁵² the ploughs together and drove them with engines by tens and twenties across the thousand-acre fields. But men and engines, they were alike driven by the drouth. In wet years the wheat rancher rode to view his shoulder-high harvest, but when the rains, going high and wide over the valley to break along the saw-teeth of the Sierras, left the wheat unwatered, the same thing happened to the crops that had happened to the cattle and the sheep. And at last, amid the rotting carcases and the shrivelled acres, the message came clear—not the land, but [132] the water. So they shut up the rivers in the cañons and the day of the orchardist⁵⁴ began.
 
Geographically⁵⁵ it begins at Bakersfield, below the gap where the Kern comes down from the giant sequoias and is constrained⁵⁷ to the wide, willow-planted canals, governed by head-gates and weirs⁵⁸. Such waters as find again their ancient levels, do so by way of the loose sandy soil through which they are filtered in vineyard and orchard. The tulares have been turned under; the elk are strictly⁵⁹ preserved in the hope that enough of them will breed to serve the purposes of curiosity. The antelope⁶⁰ bands that once flashed their white rumps from bench to bench of the tawny mesas were reduced, the last time I saw them, to a scant⁶¹ half-score roving the Tejon under the watchful⁶² eye of the superintendent⁶³. But with all this change, nowhere as at this diminished end, does one gather such an impression of the variety, the imperial extent of the San Joaquin. For at Bakersfield is one of the world's largest petroleum⁶⁴ fields. The gaunt derricks rear along the unwatered hills like half-formed prehistoric⁶⁵ creatures come up out of the ground to see what men are about. Reservoirs, fed with the stinking⁶⁶ juices of a time decayed, squat⁶⁷ along the barrancas, considering with a slow [133] leech-like intelligence the tank cars in the form of a Gargantuan⁶⁸ joint-worm of the same period that produced the derricks, as they clank between the oil-fields and the town. One of the largest oil-fields in the world—and yet the turn of the road drops it out of sight in the valley's immensity!
 
Bakersfield is a heaven of roses. Doubtless there are other things by which the inhabitants would be glad to have it remembered, but this is the item that the traveller in the season carries away with him. Roses do not die there, they fall apart of their own sweetness, wafts⁶⁹ of which envelop⁷⁰ the town for miles out on the highway. After nightfall, when each particular attar distils⁷¹ upon the quiescent⁷² air, the townspeople walk abroad in the streets and the moon comes up full-orbed across the Temblors at about the level of the clock-tower. Overhead and beyond it the sky retains a deep velvety⁷³ blueness until long past midnight. Traces of colour can be seen sometimes in the zenith when the glimmer⁷⁴ along the knife-edge of the Sierras announces the dawn.
 
North of Bakersfield, as the valley widens, the Coast Range fades to a mere² shadow mountain, the peaks of Kaweah stand out above the banded haze, angel-white like the ranked Host. As the [134] road swings in to the Sierra outposts, broad-headed oaks begin to appear; it skirts the foot of the great Sierra fault close enough for the landscape to borrow something from the dark, impending⁷⁵ pines. But for the most part what the observer has to consider is soil and water and the miraculous⁷⁶ product of these two. One must learn to think of the land in terms of human achievement.
 
 
North from the delta⁷⁷ of Kern River lies a hundred miles of country scarcely disputed with the flocks, far-called and few, which still at the set time of the year forgather in green swales behind the town for the annual shearing⁷⁸, for the herders to play hand-ball at Noriegas', to grow riotously⁷⁹ claret drunk and render an evanescent foreign touch to the brisk modern community. And every foot of that hundred miles is rife⁸¹ with the seeds of life, awaiting the touch of the impregnating water. One holds to that conviction as to a friendly assuring hand. In the presence of that vast plain, palpitating with the heat, the sluggish, untamed water lolling in the midst of it, the white-fanged Sierra combing the cloudless blue, beauty becomes a poor word: appreciation⁸² is shipwrecked and cast away. With relief one hails the beginning of a stripe, dark green like a scarf, scalloping the foothills—the citrus belt. [135] From Portersville, Lindsay, Exeter it runs north past the meeting of the waters into the valley of the Sacramento, and for quality and early fruiting sets the figure of the world market. As if its waters had some special virtue⁸³, wherever a river is poured out upon the plain some particular crop is favoured. About Fresno it is raisins⁸⁴, at Madera port wine, sherry, and mild muscatel. The Merced, which takes its rise in the valley of Yosemite, is partial to melons and figs. But everywhere are prunes⁸⁵, peaches, apricots, almonds, sugar-beets, alfalfa, unmeasurable acreage of barley⁸⁶, beans, and asparagus. Anything is impressive if the scale be large enough, even a field of onions. Here the league-long rows are as terrible as an army.
 
Up and down this empire belt proceed two great companies, the hordes of "fruit-hands" and the army of the bees, following its successive waves of fruit and bloom. Gangs of pruners, pickers, and packers are shifted and shunted as the crop demands. Interesting economic experiments transact⁸⁷ themselves under the worried producer's eye; alien race contending with alien race. The jarring interests of men have by no means worked out the absolute solution, but the bees have long ago settled their business. They kill the drones [136] and gather the honey for the gods who kindly⁸⁸ provide them with hives—the more fortunate perhaps in knowing what their particular gods require.
 
Wherever along the belt the rivers fail, the pumps take up the work; strenuous⁸⁹ little Davids contending against the Goliaths of drouth. They can be heard chugging away like the active pulse of the vineyards, completing the ribbon of greenness that spans from ridge⁹⁰ to ridge of the down-plunging hills.
 
And then one must take account of the cities of the plain! Twenty-five years ago they fringed the Sierra base, mere feeders to the mines, the cattle ranches, the sheep country. They had the manners of the frontier and the decaying, tawdry vices⁹¹ that filtered down from San Francisco, sluiced⁹² out by intermittent⁹³ spasms⁹⁴ of reform. They were "wide open." Hairy little herders with jabbering⁹⁵ tongues knifed one another in the shearing season, vaqueros "shot up the town" occasionally; it is still within memory that prominent citizen "packed a gun" for prominent citizen. Twenty years ago the last, most southerly, of the chain of settlements was a very cesspool of the iniquities⁹⁶ driven to a last stand by the

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