Shortly afterward his attention
was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying excitedly about
his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon their hive, which
was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey. Out in the broad,
swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the little
wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes, or
stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in
danger every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the
advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only
to themselves.
The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from
that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had
been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers--not
home-seekers--was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the
fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild
agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free
wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin
built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth
ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were
stirred as easily as if the land had been under cultivation for years,
tough, perennial roots being almost wholly absent.
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