[Illustration:  POINT REYES.]

He fences each farm, making proper subdivisions of large fields; he opens springs, and leads water through iron pipes to the proper places, and also to the dwelling, milk-house, and corral.  He builds the houses, which consist of a substantial dwelling, twenty-eight by thirty-two feet, a story and a half high, and containing nine rooms, all lathed and plastered; a thoroughly well-arranged milk-house, twenty-five by fifty feet, having a milk-room in the centre twenty-five feet square, with a churning-room, store-room, wash-room, etc.; a barn, forty by fifty feet, to contain hay for the farm-horses; also a calf-shed, a corral, or inclosure for the cows, a well-arranged pig-pen; and all these buildings are put up in the best manner, well painted, and neat.

The tenant receives from the proprietor all this, the land, and, cows to stock it.  He furnishes, on his part, all the dairy utensils, the needed horses and wagons, the furniture for the house, the farm implements, and the necessary labor.  The tenant pays to the owner twenty-seven dollars and a half per annum for each cow, and agrees to take the best care of the stock and of all parts of the farm; to make the necessary repairs, and to raise for the owner annually one-fifth as many calves as he keeps cows, the remainder of the calves being killed and fed to the pigs.  He agrees also to sell nothing but butter and hogs from the farm, the hogs being entirely the tenant’s property.

Under this system fifteen hundred and twenty cows are now kept on nine separate farms on this estate, the largest number kept by one man being two hundred and twenty-five, and the smallest one hundred and fifteen.  Mr. Howard has been for years improving his herd; he prefers short-horns, and he saves every year the calves from the best milkers in all his herd, using also bulls from good milking strains.  I was told that the average product of butter on the whole estate is now one hundred and seventy-five pounds to each cow; many cows give as high as two hundred, and even two hundred and fifty pounds per annum.

Men do the milking, and also the butter-making, though on one farm I found a pretty Swedish girl superintending all the indoor work, with such skill and order in all the departments, that she possessed, so far as I saw, the model dairy on the estate.

Here, said I to myself, is now an instance of the ability of women to compete with men which would delight Mrs. Stanton and all the Woman’s Rights people; here is the neatest, the sweetest, the most complete dairy in the whole region; the best order, the most shining utensils, the nicest butter-room—­and not only butter, but cheese also, made, which is not usual; and here is a rosy-faced, white-armed, smooth-haired, sensibly-dressed, altogether admirable, and, to my eyes, beautiful Swedish lass presiding over it all; commanding her men-servants, and keeping every part of the business in order.