Massachusetts and Virginia, and its people will repulse any effort at dismembering the Commonwealth, which is the largest in the Republic, except Texas.

The Name of this great State was the invention of a Spanish novelist, who in Las Serguas de Esplandian (published in 1510) made mention of "the great island of California, where an abundance of gold and precious stones is found." Fanciful philologists have derived the meaning of the word from the Spanish calida fornax, or caliente fornaza, meaning "a hot furnace," and very applicable to Lower California. The pet names, THE LAND OF GOLD, THE GOLDEN STATE and ELDORADO are of obvious origin.

MOUNT WHITNEY.

The State Seal represents Minerva, who sprung full-grown from the brain of Jupiter, as California entered the Union as a State, without Territorial probation. She is seated on a rock, with helmet and corselet, shield and spear. At her feet crouches a grizzly bear; and beyond a miner bends to work, with pick, rocker, and bowl. The Sacramento River widens out, bearing ships, typifying commercial greatness; and in the background the sun appears, and the great Sierra Nevada. The motto

is EUREKA, a Greek word meaning "I have found it."

The Governors included ten Spanish Dons, from 1767 to 1822, and twelve Mexicans, from 1822 to 1846. Then followed the era of United-States military governors, Sloat, Stockton, Fremont, Kearney, Mason, and Riley. The governors of the State have been : Peter H. Burnett, 1849-51; John McDougall, 1851-2; John Bigler, 1852-6; J. Neely Johnson, 1856-8; John B. Weller, 1858-60; Milton S. Latham, 1860; John G. Downey, 1860-2; Leland Stanford, 1862-3; Frederick F. Low, 1863-7; Henry H. Haight, 1867-71; Newton Booth, 1871-5; Romualdo Pacheco, 1875; William Irwin, 1875-80; Geo. C. Perkins, 1880-3; George Stoneman, 1883-7; Washington Bartlett, 1887; R. W. Waterman, 1887-91; and H. H. Markham, 1891-5.

Descriptive.-California is 770 miles long, and from 150 to 330 miles wide, with more than double the area of New England. The coast-line equals the distance from Cape Cod to Charleston, S. C. The State fronts along the Pacific coast

for over 1,000 miles. North of 40° is a wild and mountainous land, covered with stupendous forests. South of 35° much of the State is an unmitigated desert of arid mountains and sunken plains. Central California, between 35° and 40°, has one third of the State's area. Prof. Whitney divides this region into four equal sections, by lines 55 miles apart. The Pacific is the first line, between which and the second lie the Coast Ranges. The Great Valley is the strip next to the eastward, ending at a line drawn from Visalia to Red Bluff. East of this the Sierra extends to the line drawn from Shasta to Mount Whitney; and then the eastern slope falls away to the Great Basin. The State is traversed by the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, which interlock on the north and the south, between which extremes they swing wide apart, and enclose the Great Valley.

The Sierra Nevada is the most majestic mountain range in

the United States, covering a length of 600 miles, from Mount San Jacinto to Mount Shasta (or 430 miles from the Tahichipi Pass to Lassen's Peak), and a breadth of from 75 to 100 miles, with long and gradual slopes on the west, cut by deep cañons. The most imposing scenery is towards the south, where Mount Whitney and its alpine brethren lift their majestic granite spires. The delightful summer climate of California favors pleasuretravel in the Sierra, where the days are mild and rainless, and the air soft and clear. Thousands of tourists haunt the high valleys and lakes, encamping at great altitudes without discomfort, and unvexed by the wild storms and long rains which visit the Swiss Alps. Prof. Whitney remarks that the Alps would resemble the Sierra if most of their glaciers were melted away. The long grassy slopes leading up to the Swiss glaciers are replaced in California by vast forests, sweeping up to the snow-line. At the headwaters of King's River, the Sierra Nevada forks into two ridges, running southward, and separated by the tremendous Kern-River Cañon. The main peaks of the eastern range are Mounts Kearsarge, Tyndall, Williamson, and Whitney. Those of the western range are Mounts King, Mount Whitney is the highest peak in the United States, outside of Alaska, and was discovered by Brewer, Hoffman, and Clarence King, in 1864, and named for the State Geologist of California (now Prof. J. D. Whitney, of Harvard University). The first ascent took place in 1873. The height is 14,522 feet (Langley's measurement), 14,887 feet (Clarence King), or 14,898} (Goodyear).

Gardner, and Brewer, and Kaweeah Peak.

The main peaks in the central Sierra Nevada pass 13,000 feet in height, and include the lonely Mounts Ritter and Maclure; Mount Lyell's sharp and inaccessible pinnacle of granite, shooting up from a white waste of snow; Mount Starr King, a steep granite cone; Mount Conness, approached by a perilous knife-blade ridge; and Mount Hoffman, fronting the south with amazing granite cliffs. Mount Dana's peak of red and green slate is often visited from Mono Pass, and thence the traveller may look out over hundreds of leagues of granite domes and snowy peaks and volcanic cones, with Mono Lake in the deep valley below.

The Yosemite Valley is 3,950 feet high, on the Sierra, hemmed in by nearly vertical cliffs; and covers 36,011 acres, which Congress granted to California, in 1864, to be held as a State park. The Yosemite Fall descends 2,600 feet in three sections, one of which is of 1,500 feet, vertical. There are also wonderful cascades on the Merced River, which flows through the valley; and the exquisite Bridal-Veil Falls stripe the cliffs near Cathedral Rock with a lace-like white band 900 feet high, swaying, veil-like, in the wind. Νο words can portray the stupendous rock, El Capitan, a block of bare granite 3,300 feet high, and visible for 50 miles out on the plains; or the fantastic and colossal rock-carvings of the Spires, and the Royal Arches, and Sentinel Rock; or the astonishing Half Dome, with its vertical cliffs 1,500 feet high. This gigantic trough, hollowed a mile deep in the mountains, recessed, buried in woods, jewelled with silvery falls, and overlooked by enormous domes of rock, is one of the grandest of all Nature's temples, with features of sublimity and beauty unequalled by any other mountain-valley in the world. Yosemite is an Indian word, meaning Grizzly Bear. The neighboring Hetch-Hetchy Valley has many resemblances to the Yosemite, and heads into the great gorge of the Tuolumne River, which falls 4,650 feet within a score of miles, between cliffs a thousand feet high. The Carson and Johnson Passes, near Lake Tahoe, were the ancient freight-routes to Nevada. From this point for 160 miles south there are but five passes with trails across, two of them being near the head of the San Joaquin, and traversed only by Indians. The Kearsarge Pass, the highest in the State, crosses the great range three leagues north of Mount Tyndall, 12,000 feet above the sea, amid wonderful rock scenery. The Mono Pass, 30 miles east of the Yosemite Valley, and 10,765 feet high, is traversed by many tourists on the way to the ashy volcanic region of Mono Lake, amid lofty snowy peaks, glacier lakes, and falling streams. Bloody Cañon leads eastward from the summit of the pass to the Mono plain. The counties of Mono and Inyo lie between the granite spires of the Sierra Nevada and

the craggy Inyo Range, each of them rising 10,000 feet above the wonderfully picturesque valley, down which Owen's River flows, to sink in the dead sea of Owen's Lake. Forty miles eastward, across several parallel chains of mountains, and between the Panamint and Amargosa Ranges, the Amargosa River sinks into Death Valley (where a party of immigrants once starved to death), 150 feet below the sea, an alkaline desert in summer, and a mud-flat in winter. The Amargosa and Funeral Mountains lie east of Death Valley. The Inyo Range is lonelier than the Sierra, and forms with the White Mountains a continuous chain of 100 miles long.

DONNER LAKE.

As the Sierra goes northward it broadens and loses elevation, and where the Central Pacific Railroad crosses, it sinks to 7,000 feet. Lassen's Peak, a volcanic cone 10,537 feet high, dominates the valleys of the north. Seventy miles northwest rises the magnificent snowy cone of Mount Shasta, 14,440 feet high, visible for more than a hundred miles. Jets of steam and sulphurous gases emerging from Shasta recall former volcanic activity. The seven counties, Lassen, Shasta, Trinity, Humboldt, Del Norte, Siskiyou, and Modoc, north of the great valley, include a vast and thinly-populated country, rough and mountainous, with dry and barren volcanic plains and lava-beds in the east, and the Siskiyou, Salmon, and Scott Ranges in the west. Humboldt has 700 square miles of redwood forests, in which a score of sawmills are making slow inroads.

The Coast Ranges form a vast assemblage of mountains, following the ocean-shore for over 400 miles, with almost treeless and waterless eastern slopes, and large streams and dense forests on their misty and rocky flanks toward the Pacific. This highland region, from 2,000 to 4,500 feet in altitude, and 40 to 70 miles in breadth, stretches from the ironbound sea-coast to the Great Valley; and contains many beautiful arable glens, dotted with graceful clumps of oaks, and overlooked by higher expanses of chapparal and the bare peaks of the range. The tributary ranges are numbered by scores, especially in the south, where rise the Cuyamarca Mountains, whose chief peak looks into Mexico and out to sea; the San-Gabriel Mountains, running from the Cajon Pass to the Los-Angeles River; and the Santa-Ynez and Santa-Monica Ranges. The Santa-Lucia, San-Rafael, and San-Bernardino Ranges form an almost continuous chain several hundred miles long. The Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range are cross-connected by the Tejon Mountains and the Sierra Madre, under various names, overlooking the valleys of Los Angeles. Los-Angeles County is two thirds the size of Massachusetts, and lies in the latitude of North Carolina, in a climate-producing at once palms and bananas, apples and grapes, with roses blooming in winter, and summers cooler than in the Eastern cities. It includes a great series of valleys, falling from the Sierra Madre's snow-crested labyrinths of cañons and ridges, 40 miles wide, to the blue waters of the Pacific.

One of the chief features of the view from the San-Francisco region is the Contra-Costa hills, running from the Strait of Carquinez to Mount Hamilton, where it meets the MountDiablo Range. Mount Diablo's double-pointed crest, 3,856 feet high, is a famous landmark, and overlooks the Great Valley, the open sea, and the line of the Sierra Nevada for 300 miles. Mount Tamalpais, north of the Golden Gate, may be ascended by a carriage-road from the San-Rafael Valley, and commands a wonderful view. Mount St. Helena, a flat-topped extinct volcano, towers above the head of Napa Valley.

YOSEMITE FALLS.

The Great Valley has a level ground of 450 miles long and 40 miles wide, covering 18,000 square miles. This huge elliptical basin is drained by the Sacramento and San-Joaquin Rivers, the former flowing southward 320 miles from beyond Mount Shasta, and the San-Joaquin pouring northward 260 miles from Kern Lake. The Sacramento receives the Feather, American, Yuba and other rivers from the Sierra Nevada; and is navigable for steamboats for 90 miles, to Sacramento, and for smaller steamers to Red Bluff, 160 miles farther. The San-Joaquin rises in the high Sierra, and enters the Great Valley at Millerton. It is navigable for steamboats as far as Stockton, and smaller boats can ascend to Tulare Lake. The united Sacramento and San-Joaquin enter the shallow Suisun Bay, and flow between its low tulecovered islands into San-Pablo Bay, an expansion of San-Francisco Bay.

DEVIL'S CANON.

Lake Tahoe lies on the Sierra, 6,247 feet above the sea, abounding in fine trout, and with deep waters of exceptional purity and coldness. Mark Twain calls it "A sea in the clouds, whose royal seclusion is guarded by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts 9,000 feet above the level world." Tahoe is 22 by ten miles in area. Near by, the beautiful expanse of Donner Lake recalls a terrible tragedy of 1846-7. The Truckee River runs from Tahoe to Pyramid Lake, which has no outlet. Mono Lake, with its central cluster of volcanic islands, and its odd-looking masses of tufa along the shores, covers an area of 14 by nine miles, with the Sierra Nevada towering over its crater-pitted plain on one side, and the frowning Inyo Range on the other. The intensely bitter and salty waters of this Californian Dead Sea are almost devoid of life.

Tulare Lake receives the waters of King's River and the Sierra between its low and reedy banks, pouring down into the San-Joaquin in wet weather, and in dry times evaporating. Above are Lake Buena-Vista and Kern Lake. All these lakes have grown much smaller and salter within ten years, as a result of irrigating canals taking away the water from the inflowing rivers. Tulare has lost nearly three fourths of its area, and settlers' claims follow the receding waters. One may wade out for a mile, without getting more than kneedeep, to the hundreds of small islands and bunches of tule, the homes of millions of white birds of the gull species. Into Owen's Lake, Owen's River sinks and disappears. It has been falling for many years, and growing more bitter and poisonous. It covers about 120 square miles.

Goose Lake covers 200 square miles, and contains many fish. Near the immense areas of sage-brush on the Madeline Plains, the bright waters of Honey Lake glimmer over nearly a hundred square miles, in the wet season, and sink into a mud-hole later. A few leagues distant is the deep and crystalline Eagle Lake, shadowed by sombre wooded mountains. About 75 miles north of San Francisco, Clear Lake flashes among the high hills, for a length of 25 miles, with an average width of six miles, and a deep and crystal tide, the home of myriads of fish. Uncle-Sam

Mountain pushes its sandstone cliffs far out into the lake, forming the Narrows. Along the shores, vineyards blossom and pretty villas gleam among the trees; and a steamboat plies up and down from many-mounded Lakeport to the bright village of Lower Lake.

The Californian coast finds its chief haven in the noble Bay of San Francisco, 50 by nine miles in area, sheltered by two peninsulas from seven to 15 miles across, between whose