TOPOGRAPHY. 9 



flow eastward into Tnickee River. In the eastern part of Ne- 

 vada County there is a group of two dozen lakes, called the 

 Eureka Lakes, the largest of which is three miles long and 

 a mile wide. In Calaveras County near the summit there is 

 a cluster called the Blue Lakes. 



13. Klamath Hasin. North of latitude 41 lies the ba- 

 sin of the Klamath River, which rises in Oregon, crosses the 

 Californian line, about eighty miles from the sea, then turns 

 south west ward, and, after a course of about one hundred and 

 fifty miles, empties into the Pacific in 41 33'. The basin of 

 the Klamath is very rugged, particularly that part of it within 

 forty miles of the ocean. Along the main river there is no 

 valley, or bottom-land ; its whole length is between steep hills 

 and mountains, and through rocky canons. Its largest tribu- 

 taries, the Trinity and Salmon, run through a country almost 

 as rugged as that bordering the main stream. Scott and Shasta 

 Rivers, which are the only other notable tributaries of the 

 Klamath they all flow from the southward have valleys of 

 bottom-land, about five miles wide and forty long. 



14. Enclosed American JSasin. A prominent feature of 

 the North American Continent is the Enclosed American Ba- 

 sin, a triangular district of country, bounded on the north by 

 the basin of the Columbia, on the east and southeast by the 

 basin of the Colorado, and on the southwest by the Sierra Ne- 

 vada and Coast Range. This Great Basin an elevated tract 

 of land, most of which is four thousand or five thousand feet 

 above the sea-level, mountainous, barren, and cheerless, with 

 no outlet for its waters extends into this State, taking a strip 

 along the eastern border from 34 to 42. The California 

 portion of the Enclosed Basin is one of the driest and most 

 sterile parts of the earth's surface, cut up by numerous irreg- 

 ular ridges of bare, rocky mountains, with intervening valleys 

 of sand and volcanic scoriae, and occasional springs and little 

 streams which terminate in lakes, presenting a wide extent of 

 muddy salt water after heavy rains, and in the dry season 



