In all the instances we saw where attempts had been made to raise crops of cereals on the terraces of the Thompson and Fraser, or, indeed, anywhere in the region of shingle and gravel, they had failed. Cabbages, and vegetables of similar kind, if well watered, seemed to flourish very well; but the oats and barley were short in the ear, and the straw weak, stunted, and miserable. Water is sufficiently abundant, but the soil of the irrigated tracts is so extremely light, and in most parts underlaid by such a depth of gravel and shingle, that the water percolates through as through a sieve, and the streams disappear without spreading over the surface. The decay of the sparsely-growing bunch-grass cannot have rendered the land rich in vegetable mould. Occasional fertile spots, of a few acres in extent, occur on the margin of the rivers, as along the north and south branches of the Thompson above Kamloops. There are also patches of good land in the vicinity of William’s Lake, Beaver Lake, and Alexandria, which have proved very productive. But these rich bottoms and alluvial lowlands are striking exceptions to the general character of the country. British Columbia, rich beyond conception in many ways, is _not_ an agricultural country. Vancouver Island, too, is merely a huge rock, in the hollows of which vegetable mould has collected. But this is often too shallow to be worked with the plough, and these fertile oases are generally of small extent--fit for gardens rather than farms. In consequence, therefore, of the deficiency of the two colonies in this respect, their population is still supplied with provisions from California, and their gold goes into the pockets of Americans. California is probably the richest country in the world. Possessing every valuable mineral in inexhaustible abundance--except coal, which has not been yet found in any quantity--she has also a soil of extraordinary fertility. Her mountains are of gold and silver, and her valleys as the land of Goshen. Wheat grows so luxuriantly that “volunteer crops”--the produce of the second and even third year from the seed shaken out in the gathering of the previous harvest--spring up without the labour of man. Fruits of every kind, from the apples, pears, and grapes of temperate climes, to the pine-apples and bananas of the tropics, come to perfection within her limits. Oats grow wild on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada; and in the alluvial plains, besides the ordinary cereals, flourish maize, tobacco, and cotton. It is far otherwise with British Columbia. She probably equals California in mineral wealth, but, being as it were a mere continuation of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, a sea of hills, a land of mountains and forests, or shingly swells and terraces covered with bunch-grass, the former looks in vain for rich alluvial valleys. No colony has been more misrepresented than this.