Mountain, Lake, and Valley [pp. 540-552]

MOUNTAI4, LAKE, AVND VALLEY.
elevated plateau of Nevada or Utah, part of its extensive beds of auriferous
4,00ooo to 5,00ooo feet above the sea. The gravel, and giving an air of gray desoCoast Range is broken near its centre, lation to its naked summits, which bear
at the Golden Gate, where the Bay of the marks of ancient glaciers. The
San Francisco receives and discharges Sierra Nevada is also distinguished for
the waters of the Sacramento and its the evidences it presents of the trementributaries, forming the river system of dous forces that raised it at three sucthe whole northern interior; and those sessive epochs above the sea. A hunof the San Joaquin, forming the river dred volcanoes have blazed along its
system of the southern interior as far crest, and have covered with lava an
as the Alpine region of the Sierra. The area of not less than 20,000 square miles,
Sierra Nevada is unbroken in its whole not uniformly level or sloping, but
length, although the table lands and seamed with canions hundreds or thoudepressions at its northern and south- sands of feet deep, through which flow
ern extremities are nearly on the level the living streams of the Sierra. Someof the plateau to the eastward, and times this lava overlies, and at others
offer the easiest wagon and railroad underlies, the deposits of gold-bearing
approaches from that side. The most gravel wrought by the miner. Somestriking feature of the vegetation of the times the eruptive rocks, contemporaCoast Range is its majestic groves of neous with its flow, rise in picturesque
redwood, which flourish only in the crags that rival in height the summits
foggy regions north of San Luis Obispo, of older granite.
and in connection with a soil overlying This glance at the mountain framea metamorphic sandstone. The inner work of California is necessary to an
ridges of the Coast Range are frequently understanding of its lake and valley sysbare, or covered chiefly with varieties of tem. The chief feature of this system
oak, interspersed with the madrona, re- is the central valley of the Sacramento
markable for its smooth, bronzed trunk, and San Joaquin, supplemented at the
its curling bark, and its waxen leaves. south by the valleys of the Tulare and
When not tree-clad, these inner ridges, Kern. These valleys form a basin about
to a height of five hundred to two thou- four hundred miles long by fifty or sixty
sand five hundred feet, are often covered miles wide, which in all probability was
with wild oats, and suggest the idea of anciently the site of lacustrine or maimmense harvest fields that have been rine waters. In its northern portion
thrust up by volcanic energy, and left rises abruptly from the level plain a sinstanding high in the blue air. The gular local mountain ridge known as
most striking feature of the vegetation Sutter's Buttes, which is an object of
of the Sierra Nevada is its magnificent beauty in the landscape views of that
growth of pines, comprising several region, and seems in the floodedt seaspecies which attain a height of from sons like an island in the main. North
one hundred and fifty to three hundred of the Buttes the valley gently swells to
feet, and the famous groves of sequoia meet the foot-hills of the blending Sierra
gzgantea, which equal in height, if not and Coast Range, and these uplands
in age, the tallest pyramids in Egypt. consist of a red and gravelly soil, whereThe prominent lithological feature of as the general surface of the valley
the Coast Range is the prevalence of southward is a rich deep loam, which
matamorphic cretaceous rocks. The has frequently been known to yield
lithological structure of the Sierra Nev- from sixty to seventy bushels of wheat
ada is more primitive, granite being the to the acre. The climate of this fertile
prominent feature, underlying a greater basin is very warm in summer, and
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