File:Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba (1883) (14781481385).jpg

Identifier: oldmexicoherlost1883bish (find matches)
Title: Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Bishop, William Henry, 1847-1928
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel California -- Description and travel Arizona -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
men at work there cut down numbers which,though insignificant as compared to the very largest,are monstrous in themselves. The water for the irrigation of this district is drawnout of Kings, Tule, and Kaweah rivers by companies,who give to their principal canals such names as thePeoples Ditch, the Last Chance Ditch, the MusselSlough Ditch, and the Lower Kings Eiver Ditch. Themain ditches or canals range from twelve to forty feetin width. Wing dams confine and direct into them suchportions as are desired of the wide, meandering rivers. A California river of the south is something of acuriosity. Extravagantly wide, it is in compensationpreposterously shallow. Only a few last over the dryseason at all; the most evaporate and wholly disappear.Their dry beds, variegated by a few islets studded withsycamores, are more like wagon-roads than the beds ofrivers. Sometimes these exhausted water-courses differin color from the surrounding soil, and are seen stretch- VISALIA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 403
Text Appearing After Image:
LOGGING, BACK OF TISALIA. 404 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. ing as rivers of gray or silvery sand through the generalyellow of the desert. Though irrigation be yet in its infancy its belongingshave attained great dimensions. There are three hun-dred miles of canals of the requisite size in TulareCounty, and more than three thousand miles in Califor-nia all together. One main canal, that of the San Joa-quin and Kings River, has a length of seventy-four milesand a width of nearly seventy feet. II. A branch-road westward from Goshen, a continuationof that from Yisalia, conveys the traveller to the bus-tling, fast-growing little towns of Hanford and Lemoore,in the Mussel Slough country. This district, adjoiningTulare Lake, was recently part desert and part swamp.It has been redeemed so as to rank now among the bestfarming land in California. Its chief product is wheat.The inhabitants raise hardly the vegetables needed fortheir own use. Malaria is rather prevalent, but it is saidto a

Note About Images