CHARLES H. LEADBETTIR, SR

designed by nature for its present use. The hillside slopes sharply away up from it a thousand feet, perhaps, but the bench persists, and in it the Canal has been cut by enlarging the old Schell ditch from three feet wide to ten, and making it seven feet deep. The walls, where not thorough-cut in hard pan, are faced outside and in with rock and puddled in the middle, making them very strong. The Canal is in general so strongly constructed that it will last forever with only ordinary care, except that the flumes may have to be rebuilt after twenty-five years or so.

After two miles there comes a space where more rock cutting had to be done, and three miles from the head, Flume Number One is reached. This takes the Canal round a mountain abutment, so sloped that good foundation for trestles was given. The flume is ten feet wide and seven deep and solidly built, the trestle of Oregon pine and the box of two inch redwood lumber, remarkably

clear and good. There are three great stringers, four inches by twenty, running parallel with the flume and on them the box rests. This is caulked with oakum by professional ship caulkers, and so thoroughly that not a drop leaks through. The aprons are made in double thicknesses of plank with cement between, and are equally watertight.

Then we come to the first tunnel, already mentioned. This could not be successfully flumed round because the ground at the foot of the great escarpment drops away too sharply to give good footing for a trestle, and because of the distance saved by the tunnel. It is a noble piece of work, a straight clean cut through solid rock. When I saw it, the full stream had not been turned in and I walked through it in spite of some eight inches of water in places, gaining thus a great respect for the perseverance that had dared to face the task as a financial and as a physical proposition.

A short distance more, mostly of flume

Canal has already begun its great work of distribution. Gabel's ranch in Stanislaus Cañon has felt its life-giving touch, and the gardens of Knight's Ferry are in no more dread of drought. One of the principal branches, too, is taken out just above Trestle Six, by a cut which carries a share of the flow through the divide into the region drained by Littlejohn Creek, and quite a number of ranches right at hand are made glad. This is the famous thermal belt of the foothills, and even seven or eight years ago Knight's Ferry oranges carried off prizes at citrus fairs. It is estimated that thirty thousand acres of good orange land are under the Canal.

The valley of Littlejohn Creek is a long winding stretch of country running down toward Farmington on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the bed of the creek is used for the channel of this branch-canal for twelve miles. On its

course are some remarkably fine natural sites for storage reservoirs, should it ever become necessary to use them.

From the quaint old town of Knight's Ferry, once a mining center of great importance and the county seat of Stanislaus County, the main canal follows the windings of the bluffs, now close to the Stanislaus River and now a mile distant, covering a fine stretch of lands by small laterals. At this writing, in August, 1895, there are several flumes yet to be built across gulches and short draws in this part of the line, but the lumber is in part already on the ground, and I am assured that five weeks of work would, if necessary, put the Canal into shape to deliver water at Lathrop. It is late this season, however, to do more than to give an earnest of what the Company will be able to do next year. By that time, it is expected, forty thousand acres will be "signed."

By an enlargement of certain parts of the Canal, not costly in character, perhaps 200,000 acres will be irrigated.

Just before leaving the last swale of the foothills for the great level stretch of the San Joaquin Plains, some twelve miles from Knight's Ferry, the Canal makes use of a curious winding channel called Paulsell's Lake, which carries it out through the last line of low hills without a dollar of expense. In this, as in other ways, the Canal follows the natural lines of least resistance. But now all the difficulties are over. The Canal has reached the level plain and there is nothing to be done but to make a channel for it by the comparatively cheap scraper work wheresoever the water may be desired.

Soon after leaving Paulsell's Lake the Canal reaches the Southern Pacific Railroad at Clyde, where Mr. Harrold, one

of the chief promoters of the Canal, as has been told, has a fine ranch of ten thousand acres. He has deserved by his constancy and enterprise the rich reward he will reap when every twenty acres of his land will be ample to support a family. The land is the deep sandy loam of the San Joaquin, which is shown by the rich growth of unirrigated wheat and grasses, and by the fine old white oaks that dot the surface, -- this last an unfailing sign of good soil. This land with abundant water will grow wonderful crops of alfalfa, and of all the products of the temperate and sub-tropical

zones.

Here at Clyde, the station on the railroad near Mr. Harrold's place, the Canal divides into the Ripon branch, twentyfive miles long, and the Lathrop branch, which, after making use of the channel of Lone Tree Slough for twelve miles,

means, water has been secured, the house becomes the center of a little paradise of waving trees, flourishing vines, and blooming flowers, a fair emerald set in the dull gold of the parched stubble fields.

But water is not the only source of revenue that the Company will have. Power, estimated at ten thousand horsepower, may be developed by a system of turbine wheels, without losing at all control of the water that makes it. This

smaller wheat crops and lower prices for them, but all the more alert and anxious to hail the advent of the blessed water that is to pay off their mortgages and give them a reward for all their years of toil. On the lands to be watered by this Canal are the towns of Knight's Ferry, Farmington, Atlanta, Ripon, Atlanta, Lathrop, and it may be said, Stockton itself; for all the stretch of country to the east of it is "under the canal."

Already new towns have been laid