Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/459

Rh, is a tract of high table land, about one hundred miles in length, surrounded on all sides by mountains, and called by Frémont the of the Sacramento. Here the growth of timber is vigorous and immense, for the climate and productions are modified by altitude as well as latitude. The Sacramento river, rising in the mountains at its northern extremity, reaches the Lower Valley through a gorge or canon on the line of Shastl Peak, falling two thousand feet in twenty miles.

The is subdivided, as we have stated, into the valleys of the two great rivers, both of which are, at most, only a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, and gradually slope towards the bay. The foot hills of the Sierra Nevada limiting the valleys, make a woodland country diversified with undulating grounds and pretty vales or glens watered by numerous small streams. These afford many advantageous spots for farms, occasionally forming large bottoms of rich, moist land. Below 39° of latitude, and west of the foot hills, the forests are limited to scattering groves of oak in the valleys and on the borders of streams; or, of red wood on the ridges and in the gorges. With these exceptions, the whole region presents a surface without shrubbery or trees, though a few hills are shaded by dwarfed and stunted groves which may be used as fuel. California is covered, however, with various kinds of grasses and with wild oats, which grow luxuriantly in the valleys for many miles from the coast, but, ripening early in the season, they soon cease to protect the soil from the sun's scorching rays. As summer advances, the moisture in the atmosphere, and to a considerable depth in the earth, is completely exhausted, and the radiation of heat from the parched plains and naked hill sides becomes insufferable. North of the Bay of San Francisco, between the Sacramento and Joaquin valley and the coast, the country is cut up by mountain ridges and rolling hills, with many fertile, watered valleys. Immediately along the coast, lie open prairies, belted or broken by occasional forests, and interspersed with extensive fields of wild grain. Around the southern arm of the bay, a low, alluvial bottom land, sometimes overgrown by oaks, borders the western foot of the Coast Range, terminating, on a breadth of thirty miles, in the valley of San Jose. In this neighborhood, too, is the lovely valley of San Juan, which is probably the garden of the new State. These two valleys form a continuous plain of fifty-five miles in length, and from one to twenty miles in breadth, opening with smaller valleys among the hills. The balmy region, enclosed between the coast range and the lower