Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/774

698 CALIFORNIA angles to its former course, receiving three important tributaries and several smaller ones on the east, but not a single permanent one from the west. The area of the Sierra drained by the San Joaquin is only about half that of which the Feather collects the surplus waters. There are several large mountain lakes in California, some of which are of pure and fresh water, while others are alkaline, being without any outlet. The finest of these is Tahoe, which lies on the very summit of the Sierra, and at an elevation of about 6200 feet. It has a length of about twenty miles, and is 1500 feet deep, its water being extremely pure, as it contains only three grains of solid matter to the gallon. The overflow of this body of water passes off by the Truckee River, and enters Pyramid Lake, where it " sinks," or disappears by evaporation. Clear Lake is another beautiful sheet of water, in the Coast Ranges, and about the same length as Lake Tahoe, but much narrower and more irregular in shape. Owen s Lake is the " sink " of Owen s River, and is about eighteen miles long. Mono Lake is the sink of the streams rising in the Sierra between Mount Dana and Castle Peak. It is about fourteen miles long, and nine wide, and lies at an elevation of about 7000 feet above the sea-level. There are several other large alkaline lakes in Lassen and Modoc counties, which receive the drainage of the eastern slope of the Sierra, within the limits of the State. Death Valley is the sink of the Amargosa River, and it has evidently been once an extensive lake, although now only a mud-flat in ordinary winters, and a dry, alkaline, desert plain in summer. All these lakes and depressions show very plainly, by the terraces which surround them, that the water was formerly much more abundant, and stood at a higher level than it now does. North of the parallel of 40, where the Coast Ranges and the Sierra unite, and the Great Valley disappears, the country is extremely rough and very thinly inhabited. The seven counties which are included within the region north from the head of the Sacramento Valley to the State line had in 1870 a population of only 19,269, and they had all lost in numbers during the previous decade. The counties of Lassen, Siskyou, and Modoc, which are embraced in the north-eastern corner of the State, are chiefly covered with volcanic plains, very dry and barren, lying between pre cipitous, although not very lofty, ranges. The waters of this region have no drainage to the sea. These three counties, with an area as large as that of Belgium, had in 1870 a population of only 8175, or less than one to the square mile. The north-western corner of the State is also extremely rough and mountainous, and a large part of it quite uninhabitable. The ranges which intersect it, and which are known as the Siskyou, Salmon, and Scott Mountains, seem to be geologically the continuation of the Sierra Nevada. They are from 6000 to 8000 feet in height ; but they have never been accurately mapped, and very little is definitely known about them, although gold washings have been carried on for many years in some of the valleys bordering the Klamath River and its tribu taries. That portion of California which lies to the south and east of the southern inosculation of the Coast Ranges and the Sierra, comprising an area of fully 50,000 square miles, is also very thinly inhabited, with the exception of a narrow strip along the coast. Nearly all of San Diego and San Bernardino counties belongs to the Great Basin system, having no drainage to the sea. Los Angeles County, how ever, has within its borders some of the most fertile lands in the state. These form a strip about twenty miles wide along the coast ; the north-eastern half of the county on the other hand, is extremely barren. The region lying cast of the Sierra Nevada, and between the crest of that range and the boundary of the State, chiefly divided between the two counties of Mono and Inyo, is also a very moun tainous tract of country. Owen s River runs through it from north to south for a distance of 180 miles, emptying into the lake of the same name, lying at the south end of Owen s Valley, and with no outlet. Here the scenery is extremely grand, the valley being very narrow and the ranges on either side elevated from 7000 to 10,000 feet above the lake and river. The Inyo range, on the east, is quite bare and destitute of timber, and its summits are only occasionally whitened with snow for a few days during the winter, the precipitation being almost entirely cut off by the Sierra on the west. East of Owen s Lake arc several parallel ranges of mountains ; and beyond them, at a distance of about forty miles from the lake, is Death Valley, which is about 150 feet below the sea-level. The name was given in allusion to the fate of a party of emigrants, who perished here, many years ago, from thirst, and perhaps starvation. Between Owen s Lake and Death Valley are the Panamint Mountains, which have lately been the scene of considerable mining excitement. A portion of the extreme southern part of the State in San Diego County is also below the sea-level. Here is a depressed area of fifty miles in length, the width of which is un known ; in its lowest part it is over 300 feet beneath the level of the sea. Dry Lake occupies the greatest depression of this area at the entrance to the Coahuila Valley. There are many fine points in the scenery of California, some of which have already become well known from the descriptions of pleasure-travellers who have flocked to the State from all parts of the world. The granite pinnacles and domes of the Highest Sierra opposite Owen s Lake ; the snowy cone of Mount Shasta, rising 10,000 feet above the adjacent plains ; the lovely valleys of the Coast Ranges, with their peculiar vegetation, all these have their charms ; but the point which is most attractive of all is the Yosemite Valley. This is situated in the Sierra, about 150 miles in a direct line, a little south of east, from San Francisco. Its elevation is 3950 feet above the sea, and it is hemmed in by cliffs varying from 2000 to 3000 feet in elevation. The principal features of the Yosemite, and those by which it is distinguished from all other known valleys, are first, the near approach to vertically of its walls ; second, their great height, not only absolutely, but as compared with the width of the valley itself ; and finally, the small amount of talus or debris at the base of these gigantic cliffs. The waterfalls in and about this valley are also of wonderful beauty and variety. Those of the Yosemite Creek, which descend from the cliffs on the north side, are most remarkable for their height, which is, in the whole, not less than 2600 feet, but divided into three parts, with one vertical fall of 1500 feet. The Nevada and Merced Falls of the Merced River, which flows through the whole length of the valley, combine great height with a large body of water, and are wonderfully grand. The Half Dome is one of the most striking features of the Yosemite, its elevation being 4737 feet above the bottom of the valley, with an absolutely vertical face of 1500 feet at the summit, turned towards the Tenaya Fork of the Merced, above which it rises. The scenery of the canon of the Tuolumne River, which flows parallel with the Merced, a few miles further north, is also extremely picturesque, and remarkable especially for the great number and variety of the cascades which occur at short intervals in the deep gorge, the walls of which are bare and almost vertical precipices, in places more than a thousand feet high. The river, which is not much less than a hundred feet wide, falls 4650 feet in a distance of twenty-two miles. A few miles farther down, the narrow gorge opens out into a

beautiful valley, in many respects a wonderful counterpart