By the boundaries thus adopted and established California became restricted to a territory between the Oregon line on the forty-second paralle! of latitude on the north; the southern boundary of the United States on the latitude of about thirtytwo and a half on the south; the Pacific Ocean on the west, and two lines diverging from a point near the center of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the east, one line running due north to the northern boundary and the other running southeast to the Colorado river and thence following that river to the southern boundary. In general form it is a long parallelogram, about eight hundred miles in length northwest and southeast by one hundred and ninety in width east and west. More accurately speaking it may be said to resemble a wide felloe of a wagon wheel, with its convex side towards the ocean. It has a coast line of one thousand and ninety-seven miles and contains, according to official measurement, 157,000 square miles, or over 100,000,000 acres, of surface.

There are two main chains of mountains, the Sierra Nevada on the east and the Coast Range on the west. The Sierra Nevada chain, which runs nearly parallel with the coast from the northern boundary to the latitude of Point Concepcion, is about four hundred and fifty miles long and seventy wide. With the exception of a small section east of Lake Tahoe, the entire chain is in the State of California. Its highest crest is near the eastern side and varies from five thousand to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, though there are occasional ridges that mount to over ten thousand and peaks to over fourteen thousand feet. Nearly the entire width is occupied by its western slope, which descends to a level of some three hundred feet above tide water, while the eastern slope, which is only five or six miles wide, terminates in the Great Basin, which itself has an elevation of from four to five thousand feet. Almost all the rain or snow, precipitated upon the Sierra Nevada, falls upon the western slope. It consists generally of water evaporated from the South Pacific Ocean, brought hither by regular currents of the winds and is condensed in sweeping up from the warmer into the cooler regions of the slope.' When these winds have

1 The water is taken up in the South Pacific by the southeasterly trade-winds. Upon reaching the neighborhood of the equator, the vapor-laden air rises and flows as an upper current from southwest to northeast or, in other words, in a direction

passed the summit, they are dry and drop no fatness on the other side. But on the western side the rain and snows are so abundant as to form numerous streams, which run westward at right angles to the course of the chain and cut the declivities into immense ravines, cañons and gorges.

A few peaks of the Sierra Nevada, notably Mount Shasta near the northern end, where the chain joins the Cascade Range of Oregon, and Mount Whitney near the southern end, rise into the region of perpetual snow and have small glaciers; but as a rule all the snow melts where it falls and does not accumulate. While, therefore, in the winter and spring months, the higher ridges and summits are covered with a deep mantle of frost, impassable to ordinary travel, they are in the summer and autumn months bare and clear and the temperature mild and pleasant, inviting excursionists. The greater portion of the foothills and lower mountains up to the height of about twenty-five hundred feet are covered with oaks, nut pines, manzanita bushes and various other trees and brush, some evergreen and some deciduous; above which succeed great forests of coniferæ to a height of six thousand feet; and out of this belt, here and there, rise bare ridges or jagged peaks. There are a few mountain lakes, the largest of which is Tahoe, a magnificent body of fresh water derived from melted snows, locked between nearly parallel ridges of the summit in latitude thirty-nine. It is about twenty miles long by ten wide and its surface six thousand feet above tide water. A few small valleys and flats are found at various points among the spurs; but as a rule the entire chain. consists of immense ridges, heaped upon one another, and enormous chasms.

The Coast Range, consisting like the Sierra Nevada of various ridges, having a general northwest and southeast direction, wider in some parts and narrower in others, runs from one end of the country to the other. Its general height is from two thousand to six thousand feet. Its main or eastern ridge, which skirts the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, may be said to

directly opposite to that of the northeasterly trades. This same upper or watercharged current, after crossing over the zone of the northeasterly trades-that is to say, after it passes north of latitude 30°-sinks and becomes the under or surface current and furnishes the southerly storm-winds of California with their moisture.See Maury's Physical Geography of the Sea, §§ 122, 123, 178,187-191.

join the Sierra Nevada at or near Mount Shasta in the north, and thence to run in an almost unbroken line to the Tejon, southwest of Mount Whitney, where it again joins the Sierra Nevada; and from there the chain or the two chains combined run southeastwardly to the Colorado river. West of the main ridge and usually branches from it are various other ridges with valleys between, until the immediate coast is reached; and this consists mostly of a ridge or ridges making a number of prominent points and presenting throughout most of the distance a bold and precipitous shore line to the ocean, except where broken by rivers, creeks or bays. The eastern or main ridge of the Coast Range is the longest and most regular, having a nearly uniform elevation with only occasional peaks and passes, and being substantially unbroken, except near its middle, where the superfluous waters of the Sierra Nevada are drained off into the

ocean.

Between the Sierra Nevada on the east and the main ridge of the Coast Range on the west lies the great interior valley of California. This consists of an immense plain, some four hundred miles long by fifty or sixty wide and nearly unbroken throughout its length and breadth, exccpt by an irregular mass of steep and isolated heights near the middle of the northern half called the Marysville Buttes. The northern half is drained by the Sacramento river, which runs southwardly, and the southern half by the San Joaquin, which runs northwardly. Both these rivers rise in, and are fed almost exclusively by numerous tributaries from, the Sierra Nevada. They are, so to speak, the great veins, which collect the waters of the interior basin and carry them back to the ocean. Their courses, after fairly reaching the plain, are in nearly straight lines through its center north and south, with a fall of less than a foot to the mile, till they empty nearly together, among great marshes of tules or bullrushes, with many connecting sloughs, into the salt water of Suisun bay. From this bay the surplus waters are carried westward through the Straits of Carquinez into San Pablo bay; thence southward by the Narrows into San Francisco bay proper, and thence westward through the Golden Gate into the Pacific.

The bay of San Francisco in general shape resembles a crescent, with one horn extending some forty miles southeastwardly

and the other horn, including San Pablo and Suisun bays, extending some fifty miles, with a great curve, northeastwardly. It is surrounded with mountain ridges, all of them having a general northwesterly and southeasterly direction. The southeasterly arm lies between two of these ridges, while the northeasterly arm on the contrary, instead of lying between ridges, cuts through all the ridges of the Coast Range and has a number of separate valleys between the ridges opening upon it, from each of which it receives a small river or creek. The extent of country thus drained through the Golden Gate includes all of the great interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and, besides these, the magnificent Coast Range valleys of Napa, Sonoma and Petaluma on the north and that of Santa Clara on the south.

There stands, between the two arms of the bay of San Fran cisco, about thirty-five miles from the ocean and constituting a part of the main ridge of the Coast Range, a prominent mountain called Mount Diablo, or more properly Monte del Diablo. . Its peak, though only about four thousand feet high, is so isolated and occupies such an advantageous position with respect to the surrounding country that the view from its summit embraces the entire drainage system thus described and commands one of the widest and most interesting prospects in the world. To the northeastward, eastward and southeastward, spread out like a map, with water courses flashing like silver ribbons or marked by lines of timber, and with cities, towns and villages dotting the plains as far as the eye can reach, lie the great interior valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin; and beyond them the dark, forest-covered, snow-capped line of the Sierra Nevada from Mount Lassen in the north to Mount Whitney in the south, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. To the northward and northwestward, between intervening ridges and all opening, as it were, towards the spectator, lie the valleys of Napa, Sonoma and Petaluma, each with its stream and its towns; and beyond them ridge after ridge and peak after peak of distant northern coast mountains. Sweeping around one's feet, so to speak, is the bay or series of bays, surrounded by heights and beautiful as the lakes of Scotland or Switzerland. To the westward, leading out between precipitous cliffs from the

bay to the ocean, which bounds the horizon, glances the Golden Gate, flanked on the north by the purple peak of Tamalpais and on the south by the building-covered hills of San Francisco. To the southward and southwestward are the Santa Clara valley and the inclosing mountains, growing gradually fainter as they recede, until they are finally lost in the distant southern haze.

No other spot on the globe presents at the same time so extensive and complete a view of a great drainage system, combining so many various and distinct elements of interest and importance. But when one has cast his eyes over the immense landscape of nearly forty thousand square miles and taken in the entire amphitheater converging towards the bay at his feet, he has seen nearly all of California that is valuable, with the exception of the narrow but exceedingly rich western slope of the combined Sierra Nevada and Coast Range from Santa Barbara to San Diego and several long but narrow valleys, drained by rivers emptying directly into the ocean, in the northwestern corner. There are two remarkably large and rich valleys, each with its correspondent river, near to and nearly parallel with the coast, the one coming from the northwest and the other from the southeast, and both running in nearly direct lines towards the bay but turning suddenly off before reaching it and emptying into the ocean with mouths nearly equidistant from the Golden Gate. The northern of these is Russian river, the southern the Salinas. Each is about one hundred and fifty miles long. Though the drainage in each case is independent, it may be considered as a part of the great San Francisco system as seen from Monte Diablo; the Russian river valley being, so to speak, a continuation of the Petaluma valley, of which it possibly once formed a part, and the Salinas valley a continuation of the Santa Clara valley, though the two were evidently never connected.

The various ridges of the Coast Range have received different names. The main one is usually called that of Monte Diablo. West of it, north of Suisun and San Pablo bays, are those of Napa and Sonoma; and west of these, along the ocean, the Coast ridge. Those of Napa and Sonoma join, so to speak, with that of Monte Diablo at Mount St. Helena; and then the combined ridges, after widening out to inclose a large, elevated