Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/455

Rh the sea, while, betwixt these points, walled in by lofty cliffs on either side, a narrow strait, about a mile in width and five in length, with a depth in mid channel of forty and forty-five fathoms, forms the Chrysopolæ or Golden Gate. Beyond this, the wonderful bay of San Francisco opens like an inland sea to the right and left, extending in each direction about thirty-four miles, with a length of more than seventy and a coast of two hundred and seventy-five. The interior view of this lake-like estuary is broken in parts by islands, some of which are mere rocky masses, while others, green with vegetation, protrude from the water for three hundred or four hundred feet. The bay is divided by promontories and straits into three portions. At its northern extremity is Whaler's harbor, which communicates by a strait two miles long with San Pablo bay, a circular basin ten miles in diameter; at the northern extremity of this a strait of greater length, called Carquinez, connects with Suissun bay, which is nearly equal in size and shape to San Pablo, and into this bay the confluent waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin are emptied. A delta of twenty-five miles in length, divided into islands by deep channels, connects the Suissun bay with the valley of these rivers, into whose mouths the tide flows regularly.

On the bay of San Francisco is situated the marvellous city of the same name, which sprang up, almost "in a night," and was constructed of materials quite as frail as those of "the gourd." The town lies about four miles from the narrows or straits by which the bay is entered, on its west side, and on the northern point of the peninsula between the southern portion of the estuary and the Pacific. Its site is in a cove, faced and protected at the distance of two miles by the large island of Yerba Buena. The land rises gradually for more than half a mile from the water's edge, towards the west and south-west, until it terminates in a range of hills five hundred feet above the sea. North of the town is a large bluff, plunging precipitously into the bay, in front of which is the best anchorage.

The most important rivers of California are, of course, the San Joaquin and Sacramento. The San Joaquin, running from south to north, is represented to be navigable in some seasons for a greater part of its length, during eight months of the year. Its chief affluents, lying altogether on its eastern side, and pouring down from the Sierra Nevada, are the Lake Fork, Acumnes, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Calaveras, Mukelumne, Mariposa and Cosumnes. The Rio Colorado of the West forms part of the eastern State boundary, from the 35th degree of north latitude to the Mexican line, but it flows