Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/298

292 we believe without exaggeration, as being of sufficient capacity to contain all the Shipping of the world. The entrance of the Bay is only about one mile wide. It increases rapidly in width after entering the land; and separating, forms two arms; one bearing to the South East, the other to the North East. The Southern arm, is fifty miles in length, and ten in width, and is a beautiful sheet of water; deep, and entirely free from sand-banks and Islands. The Northern arm is sixty miles in length and about ten in width; is very crooked, containing many small islands; and has numerous creeks and coves every where indenting its shores. The St. Wakine [San Joaquin] and Sacramento Rivers, empty at the head of this arm of the Bay; the former from the South East, and the latter from the North. They are both streams susceptible of navigation, and their valleys uniting, form the most extensive body of level water found anywhere on the Western coast; being from the head of one valley to that of the other, about four hundred miles in length; and in width, from the California Mountains West, about fifty miles. There are numerous small streams running through these valleys, from the mountains, and from the highlands on the West, into the rivers; on all of which there are rich and productive strips of land from three to four miles in width, and extending back to the mountains. There are generally, along these streams, narrow belts of Oak timber, of which there are three kinds: White, Black, and an inferior kind of Live Oak. The trunks are short, and none are well calculated for fencing. Between the streams, the land is less fertile, very dry, and not at all adapted to cultivation; it, nevertheless, produces an abundance of the richest kind of grass, capable of affording support, during the whole year, to large herds of cattle and horses.

On the California Mountains, and on many of the inclinations, between them and the valleys, there is a timber