6 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



miles long, with an average width of about three miles. All 

 these islands appear to be peaks of submerged mountain- 

 ridges. Between them and the mainland lies the Santa Bar- 

 bara Channel. 



8: Bays and Harbors. California has four land-locked 

 bays Humboldt, Tomales, San Francisco, and San Diego, all 

 of them long, narrow, and separated from the ocean by narrow 

 peninsulas, their longer axes being parallel with the coast. 

 The roadsteads are numerous. Further mention is made of 

 them in the chapter on commerce. 



9. Tale-Land. Along the borders of most of the bays, 

 the Tulare and Kern Lakes, and the Sacramento and San 

 Joaquin Rivers, there are extensive tracts of swamp-lands, 

 usually called " tule-lands," from the tule, a species of rush, 

 which grows on them. Nearly all the tule-land west of Sac- 

 ramento and Stockton, to which points the tides extend, are 

 salt marshes; but north of Sacramento and south of Stockton 

 the tule-lands are fresh-water swamps. The area of the tule- 

 land is estimated to be 3,000,000 acres. 



10. Sierra Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is four hundred and 

 fifty miles long (in California) and seventy wide, with a height 

 varying from live thousand to eight thousand feet above the sea- 

 level. Nearly its whole width is occupied with its western 

 slope, which descends to a level of three hundred feet above 

 the ocean ; whereas the slope on the eastern side is only five 

 or six miles wide, and terminates in the Great Basin, which is 

 itself from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea. 

 Nearly all the snows and rains that visit the Sierra Nevada fall 

 on its western slope, which has all the large rivers. These 

 rivers run westward, at right angles to the course of the chain, 

 and cut it into steep hills and deep ravines, canons, and chasms. 

 The valleys are all small, and it is rare to see a hundred acres 

 of level, tillable land, even on the banks of the largest moun- 

 tain streams. The greater part of the Sierra Nevada is cov- 

 ered with timber. The oak, manzanita, and nut-pine grow to 



