The San Joaqum Valley. 257 



Here is the town of Mojave. In a subsequent part of his own journey- • 

 ings through CaUfornia the writer was lodged at this place for eighteen 

 hours. During that time he did as much as his natural parts would bear in 

 traversing the desert stretches and in climbing the mountain-slopes six 

 miles away. The latter experience gave him opportunity to study in its 

 first conditions the wonderful process by which these vallej^s have been 

 formed. The Californian valley m totally different from the fact so called 

 in the countries east of the Mississippi. The former is simply a level plain 

 between the mountain ranges. This plain is sometimes a half mile and 

 some times a hundred miles in width ; but whatever be its extent, the proc- 

 ess of formation has been the same. The substance of the valley is the 

 detritus of the mountain-slope. Yonder, on the right and left, at an average 

 distance of from five to thirty miles, rise the sloping walls of the Coast Range 

 and the Sierra Nevada. They are made, for the most part, of granite. 

 Here and there they are of porphyry or sandstone. The latter is Hugh Mil- 

 ler's famous old rock, and the former, along with gneiss, is, I believe, a 

 member of the granite group. Now, this granite, exposed to the action of 

 the elements, gradually decays. In vulgar language, it rots. It breaks off 

 in small blocks, perhaps an eighth of an inch, may be half an inch, in big- 

 ness. These, in their turn, disintegrate under the action of the elements. 

 The needles of sunshine and of frost penetrate them till they are reduced 

 first to sand and then to soil. Meanwhile, the rains come. Heaps of snow 

 are piled up in the gorges. With the return of spring these melt and rush 

 down in turbid floods, carrying with them the material with which the 

 valley is filled up. Of course, a lowland formed in this way will be nearly 

 on a water-level. As a general rule, the California valleys are as plane as 

 the surface of the sea. In this respect, their appearance, until broken by 

 vegetation and the works of man, is less varied than that of the smoothest 

 prairies of Illinois or Iowa. 



Our Society was borne on through this Mojave desert — and now the map 

 is again in requisition. The reader will note that the Sierra Nevada and the 

 Coast Range mountains bend together at the northern extremity of the Ma- 

 jave desert, thus constituting what is virtually a continuous chain. The two 

 ranges are like the link of a log-chain laid on the ground. At the apex of 

 these mountains which you now approach is the great pass of Tehachapi. 

 Through this famous mountain gorge we now make our way, climbing up 

 to a height of more than 4,000 feet, and then winding around the summits 

 on our way down by the little Swiss-like town of Caliente into the great San 

 Joaquin valley. It is at this place that Mr. Hood, the distinguished engineer 

 of the Southern Pacific Railway, in order to gain distance in the descent 

 from Tehachapi down to the plain, has performed the difficult feat of con- 

 structing a loop. That is, the track of the railway is carried around a series 

 of declivities until it passes under itself nearly at right angles. On the descent 

 you see before you, and far below, the tunnel under the track through which 

 you are to pass in winding down. At the same time the track is visible be- 



