The brave captains of our coasting vessels fear nothing so
much as a timber raft adrift which may crash into a vessel at any moment
and against which there is no way of guarding.
Chapter XIII
To All that Sow the Time of Harvest Should be Given
In all but savage countries, wheat is the most important product of the
soil, A large proportion of human beings living on the earth to-day are
so poverty-stricken as to make the question of food a matter of anxiety
for every day. The prayer for bread unites more voices than any other.
The padres who settled California understood this well. A number of
bushels of wheat, snugly incased in leather sacks, formed a precious
part of the cargo of the San Carlos, that stout Spanish vessel which in
1769 brought the first settlers to California. This seed-wheat was
divided among the early missions and as soon as possible was planted--
not with success at first. For a time the padres made little progress in
crop raising. They had to learn by their failures. In San Diego the
first wheat planted was sown in the river bottom and the seed was
carried entirely away by the rising of the stream in the winter; and the
next year, which proved to be a dry one, it was planted so far from the
water that it was almost all destroyed by drought.
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