Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/453

Rh the Sierra Nevada, are finally discharged into the Pacific by the bay of San Francisco which bursts through a gap in a lower chain of mountains bordering the coast. This western Coast Range, averaging about two thousand feet in height, forms, with the Eastern Sierra Nevada, the intermediate sloping plain or valley which is completely drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin.