326 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



Having received fresh supplies in the spring of last year, he returned to the 

 Llano, and in April last resumed his labors there. His former attained results 

 having demonstrated the existence of abundant water beneath the surface, 

 he went five miles eastward from the first well, and there sank the second. 

 In the prosecution of this work he struck the same streams that he had found 

 in sinking the first well, and on reaching a depth of eight hundred and sixty 

 feet, he encountered another which rose seven hundred and fifty feet in the 

 tubing. At this point the material was again exhausted, and the small 

 appropriation made by Congress for the experiment had been expended. 

 Captain Pope was therefore obliged to suspend his labors, and await further 

 orders from the government. 



The results of this work have been eminently successful, for they demon- 

 strate the feasibility of the plan of procuring water on this great plain by 

 the sinking of Artesian wells, and it is much to be hoped that Congress will 

 make another appropriation to continue and perfect the work. Through the 

 absence of water the Llano Estacado forms a complete barrier to travel 

 between the western towns of Louisiana and Arkansas to New Mexico and 

 the Mesilla valley, along the line of the thirty-third parallel, b} r a route which 

 is some hundreds of miles shorter than any other. It is covered throughout 

 with grama grass, which is one of the most nutritious of the grasses for 

 cattle, and which has the greater advantage that it is not killed by the cold of 

 winter, affording abundance of pasture all the year round. 



GENERALITIES OF THE GEOLOGY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 



AND OREGON. 



At the Albany meeting of the American Association, Dr. Newberry gave a 

 general view of the geology of Oregon and that part of California lying north 

 of San Francisco*and of the age and structure of the three ranges of mountains 

 which, he said, gave character to the topography of the Far West, and of the 

 valleys which lie between them. These " valleys," he said, were rather 

 plains or plateaus than valleys. The Sacramento Valley was a plain lying 

 between the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada for the most part destitute of 

 trees through which the river ran with tortuous course, like a brook in a 

 meadow. In the lower part of the Sacramento Valley, there were no rocks 

 older than tertiary; but at the head of the valley he had found the car- 

 boniferous limestone clearly marked by its characteristic basalts, on which 

 were lying the cretaceous and tertiary strata, precisely as on the Upper 

 Missouri. 



Crossing the volcanic spur of the Sierra Nevada connecting Mount Shasta 

 with that great chain of mountains, he had descended into the Klamath 

 Basin, which he said formed an appendage to the great basin of the Salt 

 Lake and was a plain somewhat cut by subordinate ranges of mountains, lying 

 at a considerable elevation and containing a large number of lakes, of which 

 the Klamath were the most important. This basin was drained through the 

 canons of Pit river, the largest tributary of the Sacramento, which, like the 

 Klamath river, had forced its way through the mountain ranges which lay 

 between the basin and the sea; Pit river flowing through an impassable 



