CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.
California extends from Oregon to Sonoma and Lower California, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. It shows a coast-front extending ten degrees of latitude, from the thirty-second to the forty-second parallel. To the voyager it presents only high and forbidding headlands—mountain ranges which step down from the broad table-lands in the interior, and push a bold foot far out into the waters of the ocean.
This country possesses 420,000 square miles, and is remarkable for its lofty ranges of mountains, among which lie interspersed limited but beautiful valleys and more extensive plains. Its diversity of climate and soil is as great as the varieties of its surface.
The channel which forms the entrance into this singular country from the Pacific is two miles in width and three in length, and is opposite, under the same parallel of latitude, to the Straits of Gibraltar. After passing through this channel, the lowest of the series of bays, that of San Francisco, opens broadly before you, dotted with several islands clothed with verdure, and rocks white with their coating of guano, around and upon which hover and settle immense flocks of sea-fowls. Above the ranges of hills, in the east, rises the distant Sierra, crowned till July with its winter snows. The bay opposite the city is twelve miles wide, and, with the bays above, contains anchorage ground sufficient to accommodate every vessel, from the ship of war down to the schooner, in the whole world. In the north, the bay contracts into a narrow passage, and opens soon into a second spacious bay, ten miles in diameter. Still another strait connects this bay with a third, containing numerous islands, and receiving, at its head, the waters of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. These, with the Colorado, are the principal rivers of California.
The mountain ranges may be briefly described. Fifty miles from the barren and sandy shore of the Pacific, and running parallel with it, is the coast-range, well defined, but not so elevated as the other more remarkable range. This is the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Range, which bears its lofty peaks, covered even into summer with snow, far into the sky. This range is one hundred and fifty miles farther inland, and also runs parallel with the coast.
Within all this lies the available portion of California, which consists of several fertile valleys, among which I shall notice particularly those of San Juan, and of the Sacramento and San Joaquin. The former is of limited extent, being not more than twenty miles long by twelve wide, but of great fertility. This may be regarded as the garden of California. There can not be found a more salubrious or more equable climate in any part of the world. It is said to resemble that of Andalusia, in Spain. This valley is situated between the coast-range and the Pacific, and extends from the Bay of San Francisco north and south.
The valley of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin lies between the coast-range and the Sierra Nevada. It may be considered as one continuous valley, the two rivers uniting their waters at the head of the bays. It extends in length from about the forty-first parallel of latitude, three hundred miles to the delta of the Sacramento, and thence to the head waters of the San Joaquin. Over this whole region is found scattered the evergreen oak, resembling the trees of an old apple-orchard, and upon the ridges grows the red-wood. A fine growth of pine is found among the mountains.
All the tributaries of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rise among the Sierra Nevada. It is of importance to have the position of these well understood. The first branch worthy of note in descending the Sacramento is called Feather River. Bear Creek and the Yuba are streams emptying into this river. The American River is another branch of the Sacramento, fed by those streams named North, Middle, and South Forks. In proceeding south up the San Joaquin, the Stanislaus is the first river of note. The next branch is the Tuolumne, and then the Merced—the Rio de los Mercedes of Old California, and abbreviated into Mercey by the miners. Higher up are the Marepoosa, King’s, and some smaller rivers. All these are rapid, clear mountain streams, containing abundant supplies of the finest salmon. The Sacramento and the San Joaquin have no tributaries on the lower or western side.
Still within these interior limits last described lies a comparatively narrow belt of land, difficult of access, guarded by a thousand dangers and privations, yet possessing all the extraordinary and magical influence of Aladdin’s cave, and realizing our boyhood’s dreams when we filled our hats with the shining coins. This—the heart of the country—is the true, the mysterious California—the shrine at which tens of thousands of weary and exile pilgrims do homage, and where already great multitudes have left their bones. This is California—the country lately an uninviting wilderness, where the Indian and the bear disputed possession, now, all along its streams, upon its bars, in its gulches and ravines, covered with the tented home of the miner, while its hill sides echo back ten thousand eager voices, the din of innumerable picks and shovels, and the scraping and grating sounds of a thousand cradles incessantly rocked, emptied, and refilled.
Let us attempt a description.