[Illustration: PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]




CHAPTER IX.

DAIRY-FARMING IN CALIFORNIA.


The great valleys of California do not produce much butter, and probably
never will, though I am told that cows fed on alfalfa, which is a kind of
lucerne, yield abundant and rich milk, and, when small and careful farming
comes into fashion in this State, there is no reason why stall-fed cows
should not yield butter, even in the San Joaquin or Sacramento valleys.
Indeed, with irrigation and stall-feeding, as one may have abundance of
green food all the year round in the valleys, there should be excellent
opportunity for butter-making.

But it is not necessary to use the agricultural soil for dairy purposes.
In the foot-hills of the Sierras, and on the mountains, too, for a
distance of more than a hundred miles along and near the line of the
railroad, there is a great deal of country admirably fitted for dairying,
and where already some of the most prosperous butter ranchos, as they call
them here, are found. And as they are near a considerable population of
miners and lumber-men, and have access by railroad to other centres of
population, both eastward and westward, the business is prosperous in this
large district, where, by moving higher up into the mountains as summer
advances, the dairy-man secures green food for his cows the summer