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Collection: Directories and Documents > Nevada County News & Advertisments
1872 (281 pages)

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Page: of 281

GRASS VALLEY UNION SEPTEMBER 17, 1872 209
Sacramento.
The great Stat Fair is the prominent feature of Sacramento at present. During the past week
people were flocking thither, in order to engage accommodations for the Fair week, preferring
to pay an extra fortnight’s hotel bill, to running the risk of being unable to procure suitable
accommodations otherwise, and the hotels and boarding houses were fixing up beds in every
available nook and corner of the establishments. It is expected from the large number of parties from
the East who have sent ahead to secure accommodations, that with the attendance from all parts
of the Pacific slope, the population of Sacramento will be increased by some 10,000 during the Fair
week.
The Fast Horses.
During a sojourn of five days in Sacramento scarcely anything was talked of but the Fair—the
races, Goldsmith Maid, Lucy, and the Occident. Shrewd turfmen were not slow in the expression of
their opinion, and backing it with coin, in favor of Occident, and the groundwork of their opinion
seemed to be that Occident had one advantage over the others, in addition to speed, that of being
thoroughly acclimated and at home, while Goldsmith Maid and Lucy, under the most favorable
circumstances, would feel the effect of change, and can not, they think, become acclimated in the
short space of time between their arrival and the races. The sending Sacramento water to Ogden for
the use of the horses was not, they aver, to prevent their using alkali water, so much as to inure them
to the use of Sacramento water, which, if in their tastes they be anything like “human” horses, from
the pure mountain air and cool water, will require a long-suffering spell before acquiring a relish for
the lukewarm, flat article pumped up [in Sacramento].
Yolo County.
Buggy traveling in the flatlands at this season of the year is not to be considered exactly in the
light of pleasure, the traveler being reminded at every foot of his journey that he is but dust, and the
more sensibly so if he happens to get in the wake of a bull team or a six-horse prairie “dug-out.” It is
the easiest thing in the world to use up that old time authorized declaration that “a man in his life
time must eat a bushel of dirt,” for here any man that has the capacity and intends to travel must
necessarily eat a bushel of dirt a day, and, to adopt a familiar Pike county ministerial expression,
carry off from “these low grounds of sin and sorrow” another bushel in his boots and habiliments,
and have enough left in, on and around his hat to make several moderate size bricks.
Alfalfa.
There is a want of variety in the flatlands, dried up fields in their sear and yellow appearance
make traveling too monotonous for pleasure, and but a slight relief to the eye is the occasional patch
of living green. We stopped to make enquiry at one of these oases in the desert, from the party who
was engaged in mowing, and from him we learned that he was then taking off the fourth crop this
season; that he sowed the seed last year and got a double crop, and this season, the roots having
reached moisture, after the fourth mowing he intended turning his cows in and expected to keep
them in good order off that patch during the Winter. Why this available article of food for cattle is
not more extensively cultivated seems unaccountable; cattle thrive well upon it; cows give more
and richer milk than on ordinary grazing pasture land; there is no need of plowing, sowing and
harrowing, year after year, as for other crops; the alfalfa once rooted wants no farming implements
near it for many years; cattle cannot destroy the roots, and last of all its rapid growth should
commend it to ranchmen, who are so ready to grumble over short crops and poor times.
Railroad Talk.
The railroad men were working so lively on that portion of the railroad between Davisville and
Sacramento which was so completely demoralized last winter, that it is certain before this article is
read regular trains will run on the route between Sacramento and Vallejo. The track as laid seems