EXHIBIT L. Donations to the Park for the two years ending November 30th, 1877. NAMES. DESCRIPTION. One package seeds; one hundred roots; fig trees. One bag mesquite beans. One package mesquite beans. Fifty-one valuable plants from Sandwich Islands; twenty-five packages seeds. -One package grass seed from Ireland. One box laurel and geranium cuttings. Four packages lupine seed from France. Four boxes grass from Sandwich Island; one package beech seed. Reports of Department of Public Parks, New York City; Manual of the Corporation of New York City; one package Nephelium Litchi. Report of the operations of the United States Life Saving Service for year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-six. Two sacks dahlia bulbs. One barrel dahlia bulbs. One lot Texas grass roots. One package of seeds of rare plants from Europe. One dozen Oregon quail. „One-quarter dozen California quail. INDORSEMENT OF SENATOR ROGERS' BILL RELATIVE TO Sweeping and Cleaning the Streets of San Francisco. INDORSEMENT. To the HON. J. W. COFFEY, Chairman of the San Francisco Delegation of the Assembly, Sacramento, California: DEAR SIR: We, the undersigned, residents and taxpayers of the City of San Francisco, beg leave to represent that we are in favor of the Rogers' Act, and are opposed to the present system of sweeping and cleaning the streets of the city by the so-called Bromley Sweeping Machine. Under the Rogers' Act employment would be given to a large number of laboring men, and as you are well aware there are a larger number of laboring men out of employment at the present time, many of them having families in a destitute condition. We would, therefore, ask you to present this matter to the delegation, well knowing that you gentlemen have the interests of the laboring classes at heart. By giving the matter your consideration, you will oblige many residents and taxpayers. MAJORITY REPORT. Mr. SPEAKER: Your Committee on Mining Debris, to whom was referred the investigation of the matter respecting the effect produced by the settling upon the farming lands lying along the Feather, Yuba, Bear, and Sacramento Rivers of the washings from the mines contiguous to and lying along the rivers bisecting the localities indicated, as well as to the incidental effect the detritus referred to has and will have upon the navigation of the rivers, and its ultimate result upon the Bay and Harbor of San Francisco, have had the same under careful consideration, have taken voluminous testimony touching the subject matter of the investigation, and as a result, based upon the testimony, beg leave to submit the subjoined report: From the concurrent and unanimous testimony of the witnesses examined it was established to the mind of your committee that, at the date of the early settlement of the State the water of the Sacramento and its tributaries was entirely free from the detritus with which it has become so heavily charged since hydraulic mining was introduced in the mountains; and from the united testimony of navigators having years of experience, as well as citizens living along the rivers above mentioned, it is unquestionable that those streams had deep beds, protected by high banks, and that the few shoals they contained were so unimportant as to interfere but slightly, if at all, with their safe navigation. The same testimony establishes the fact that their navigation at the present day is to a very considerable extent interfered with and hazarded by deposits of sediment carried in solution from the mines, and deposited in vast quantities in the beds and along the banks of the rivers, causing shoals, bars, and islands, that threaten not only the destruction of our great navigable rivers, but menace the safety of the great harbor upon whose existence the commerce of nearly the entire State, and not a little of that of foreign countries, depends. And in this connection your committee deem it not inappropriate to refer to an interest of the General Government cognate to that of the State, in so far as that the sure, but by no means slow, shoaling of the waters of Suisun Bay, as well as those immediately adjacent to Mare Island, caused by deposits of detritus from the mines, seriously threatens the destruction of the harbor for vessels at that point. This conclusion is supported by the concurrent testimony of the practical as of the eminently scientific witnesses called before your committee to testify as to the effect a constant disemboguing into those bays of the volume of debris carried in solution by the Sacramento River will produce. The effect produced upon the rivers themselves will best be under stood by a reference to the testimony, which seems to establish the fact, beyond a controversy, that the beds of the rivers are already filled up to a depth of from four to twenty-five feet, causing shoals, bars, and islands in such number and extent as to interfere with their navigation to a very considerable extent at the present time, and to forebode the calamity of their entire destruction as high ways of commerce at no distant day. a The testimony elicited by your committee establishes the further fact that the debris from the mines has not only filled up the channels of the Yuba, Bear, and Feather Rivers, in so far, in several instances, as to divert their waters from their natural courses, but also as to thereby cause the destruction of thousands of acres of most valuable farming lands, by causing their overflow and the consequent deposit thereupon of a sterile detritus, to their total ruina ruin carrying with it a loss of many hundreds of thousands of dollars in property, to the impoverishment of many citizens, valuable for their influence, and the seemingly inevitable ruin of many more, alike valuable to to the the community. Fertile farms, immense orchards, blooming gardens, costly improvements, and homes happy with all the surroundings that embellish communities and enrich a State - all are engulfed in common destruction, and their owners have gone out bankrupted from the merciless invasion of a foe that has left them penniless. The unanimity of the testimony taken by your committee leaves no room to doubt that the injury inflicted upon the hapless people whose misfortunes all so much lament, is due to an interest itself of recognized importance to the State. None will underrate the value to a community of those who assail mountain sides with an energy that brooks no obstacle, and an enterprise that laughs at any expenselooking only at the achievements of science and the victories of skill which tear them from their foundations and pour millions of wealth into the lap of the world. Yet the vanquished mountain, like a sullen foe, turns with relentless fury upon the plain and destroys it; and at every flood, like an angry tide, it goes on widening and deepening until nothing is left to destroy. In the mountain gorges, rocks and bowlders from the mines choke up the channels of the streams, to the depth sometimes of more than a hundred feet, and the water, dashing down the declivities thus formed, carry stones and gravel for miles down the streams, whilst the soil, beaten into the smallest possible particles, is carried in solution, to be deposited upon the fields or in the bottoms of the rivers, to the present ruin of the former and to the ultimate destruction of the latter. The Sacramento, above its confluence with the Feather River, ist perfectly clear, although it runs through a cultivated district for more than a hundred miles. This, to the minds of your committee, is ample refutation of the opinion of some of the witnesses who seemed to conclude that it is detritus from the fields, and not debris from the mines that is shoaling our rivers, desolating our fields, and choking up our bays. More than this, the Sacramento-below its confluence with the Feather, which is heavily freighted with debris from the mines-immediately puts on the yellow hue of the latter and carries it changeless to the bay. Further yet, prior to the inauguration of extensive hydraulic mining enterprises, the beds of our rivers were from fifteen to thirty-five feet 5 deep, whereas, because of the filling up by sediment from the mines, many of them now run upon plateaus higher than the land which then formed their banks; and now new banks, formed from detritus dropped by the river, protect the former banks from overflow, whilst, in not a few instances, the former banks of rivers are the present beds of the same rivers. Yet it is a fact worthy of special note, that this condition of things exists only in connection with streams which debouch from mountains where hydraulic mining is extensively prosecuted. These facts are, in the mind of your committee, so irrefragable as to admit of no doubt. Hence, but one question is left for solution, and that is: "What can be done to remedy this great wrong to one class of our people, and how may it be done so as to inflict the least possible injury to the other class?" Herein lies the great problem of an epoch vital in its solution to the prosperity of the State. And the magnitude of the issues involved warrants your committee in concluding that no more judicious use of money could be made than in one that shall provide for a Commission of competent persons, aided by engineering skill the most profound, to make an investigation of all the facts and premises of the case, to the end that some remedy may be found for what it is a mild expression to denominate a deadly menace to the grandest and most important industry of this or any other State. The only objection to the appointment of a Commission such as herein indicated, is that, during its labors, the work of ruin is going on, and night and day the track of desolation broadens, and widens, and deepens, and there is no power to check its devastating encroachments. The proportion of matter held in solution by the water, as shown to your committee by actual test, is one gallon in every one hundred gallons in the Yuba, and it is fair to conclude that it is the same, or nearly so, in the other debris carrying streams. From this immense amount, accumulating on and on throughout all time, it becomes a simple matter of mathematical calculation to determine the time to elapse before a calamity at which all must shudder will be upon the State; and this calculation will only err in postponing to the hope, what will not be realized to the fact, of the dawn of the dreaded day, for that larger proportion of matter, too heavy to be carried in solution, and which is being constantly rolled along the bottom of the rivers and disembogued into the eddies of the bay, only adds a huge factor of ruin which all will dread, but none can measure. And in view of the fact that a proposition is being urged to divert from their natural channel a portion of the waters of the Sacramento, above its confluence with the Feather River, by means of a proposed canal whose outlet shall be Suisun Bay, your committee deem it essential to call attention to the fact, also established by the testimony, that the immense deposits of debris in the bed of the Sacramento during the seasons of low water, and which the flow during the summer season is insufficient to remove, is only carried forward by the force of the floods during the rainy season; and, should any considerable volume of the Sacramento be turned aside from its natural channel into the canal proposed, it is reasonable to conclude that the river will thereafter fail to have force enough to scour the mud from the bottom of the river, in which event the bed of the Sacramento will, like those of the Yuba, Bear, and Feather Rivers, 2* |