out in anticipation of the coming of the waters and town lots and colony tracts have already been sold. Escalon, the most promising of these, is twenty miles from Stockton near the Stanislaus River, in a country noted for its adaptability for olives and almonds, oranges and all semi-tropical fruits. The task of the Canal well done will need a vast volume of water and will yield an income that should content the most vaulting ambition. But what is the amount of water available? Practically the whole flow of the Stanislaus. A greater dam than is planned might be needed for this, but the people of Knight's Ferry are confidently expecting the time. next year the new dam is done and when when the stream will be turned into the Canal enough to allow them to get at the river bed and wash out the gold that has been settling there all these years. Mining operation have been going on on the river hands for forty-five years, even today there are Chinese miners who are working the gravel of the river banks with the old fashioned pan and rocker and making forty to seventy cents a day. Millions of gold have been taken from the cañon and yet the river bed has never been worked. No wonder the people whose deeds give them lands to the center of the river channel are excited over the prospect. Mr. But even now the Canal is, or will be inside of two months, delivering four hundred cubic feet of water a second, or three hundred millions gallons a day, enough, as Mr. Woods says, to supply two cities of the size of New York. Woods is one of the public spirited attorneys of the Company, Woods & Levinsky, who have rendered efficient service to it as to a great public benefaction, in the same spirit that has led them to donate their services to the Valley Railroad. He grows pleasantly enthusiastic over the thought of what the Canal will do for San Joaquin County. "That land has been lying baking under the sun all these years, and now it needs a little reviving to blossom I talked with some of the large landowners in the region and find they have quite sensible ideas about the matter of encouraging settlement. One of them told me he meant to sell off alternate or scattered small tracts of his holding at bed-rock rates, to the right sort of men, and when those men had demonstrated by their work on the land what it is capable of with water, he would reap his reward by being able to command his own price for the remainder. As I rode down through this country on my way back from seeing the Company's works, I could not help trying to imagine out. It's an Eden near at hand,- right in sight." But it may be questioned how the ranchers of this region, if already in straits financially, are to acquire water rights and get the benefit of the Canal. This is all arranged by the scheme of the Company. The rancher "signs" for water, that is, agrees to pay ten dollars per acre tor the permanent water right, and $1.50 per acre per year for the use of water. He is given twenty years to pay the ten dollars in, surely not an onerous load. VOL. xxvi.-25. the same lands five years hence. Instead of far separated farmhouses each with its few trees, and some deserted places where water had so failed that AN EVERY DAY MARTYR. AY to the East the Sierra range stood misty and purple, its snow-rimmed crest blending with the clouds. Fields of yellow stubble covered the open stretch of plain between the foothills and timber belt, finding a background in the rich dark green of the live oak groves that outline the course of river and creek that feed Tulare Lake. Harvest was over. For weeks six and eight horse teams, heavy with sacks of grain, had cut deep ruts in the sandy soil and left in their wake a trail of dust, which, caught by sudden gusts of wind, was sent in eddies down a road that formed the section-line between two ranches. All through the long hot summer months, the dust rolled in dense clouds off to the neighboring fields, to hang for hours like a veil over the landscape, depositing a film of yellow on trees and grass, and dimming a once glaring whitewashed house, almost hidden by spreading fig trees. Shanty would be a more correct term for the small square box-like structure of rough redwood boards, the pine shake roof stained and warped by the passing seasons. The ground before the partly open door, bare and hard from constant sweeping, bore evidence of a thrifty hand, but all day the fitful October winds had banked the half-dried fig leaves against the door-sill, giving an air of neglect, intensified by the shrill cries of a motherless brood of chickens standing with anxious eyes and outstretched callow necks before the door. from the orchard, where in his frantic efforts to get loose, he over-turned a frame of sun-dried fruit. The warm sun beat in the window, through the cotton curtain that, blown to one side, hung limp against the outer wall, its whiteness marred by a streak of dirt gathered in the trail across the window-sill, and on to the clean scrubbed floor, lighting up the corners of the square north room. Above the broad open fireplace, the varnished mantel, stained with traces of tobacco juice, held a miscellaneous collection, the outcome of certain needs, a cracked blue vase filled with the next year's vegetable seeds, a cigar box, the receptacle for tacks and pieces of twine, a basket of worn socks, and a half-smoked pipe. The tall loud-ticking clock pointed to four. The angular features of the room suggested no sweet human intercourse when the day was ended and the hearth aglow. In one corner was a bed. Its pillows in their coarse cotton slips, rose primly above the log cabin quilt, and full high feather tick, whose bright-hued line of colors was broken by the woman lying across it. For hours she had lain there, deaf to the cries of the hungry chickens, the bellow of the frantic calf. Her face was buried in the pillow, like a tired child's. The brown hair, streaked with early threads of age, so thin around the blueveined temples, the hollow cheeks, the sharp lines, like pencil-tracings, across the brow, all expressed care and bodily fatigue. One arm lay under her, but the other hand, brown and callous from A newly weaned calf lowed piteously toil, still held in the fast slackening fin |