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FROM THE ORIENT DIRECT.

canals which cut up the tule marshes in all directions. Eternal Winter looks down from the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada on Summer, in all her riches, in the valleys below us, and we, looking at both by turns, have but to cast our eyes toward San Francisco, where summer heat is never fully felt, and winter's cold never comes, to see eternal Spring. Tropical heat is felt, and tropical fruits flourish in the valleys of Sacramento and the San Joaquin, and up on yonder mountains, near the limit of human habitation, the climate and productions of New England may be found. The gold placers of the foothills, the quartz ranges of the mountains, the wide valleys and rich alluvial bottom lands, resembling those of the Delta of the Mississippi, along the Sacramento and San Joaquin, the vine-clad hills of Napa and Sonoma, the great pine forests of the upper mountains, the boundless pastures of Contra Costa and Alameda, all lie before us. Without Le Sage's demon's gift, we look down into the dooryards, and upon the roofs of half the dwellers in all the goodly land of California. Pacheco Valley, rich with the broad acres of ripening grain, where the reapers are already at work; Moragua Valley, green as an emerald lake, where the haymakers are; Livermore, San Ramon, Nashau, Marsh, Walnut, and a dozen other valleys, are around us. There is grass enough standing in the valleys beneath us, to feed countless thousands of cattle, but since the great drouth of 1863-4, the country is almost stripped of live stock, and we look over miles on miles of pasture, in which we cannot discern a single animal. To