TOPOGRAPHY. 11 



from it, is Eagle Lake, about half the size of the other. The 

 land is barren and the vegetation scanty. Pit River starts in 

 the northeastern corner of the State, breaks through the 

 plateau, and empties into the Sacramento, to the basin of 

 which it belongs. North of the river are Wright Lake and 

 Rhett Lake, within five miles of the Oregon line ; and Goose 

 Lake and Lower Klamath Lake, partly in Oregon and partly 

 in California. The largest is Goose Lake, fifteen miles long 

 and five wide. Some of the lakes in the Enclosed Basin 

 change their character according to the seasons. After abund- 

 ant rains they are large, and their water is clear and sweet ; 

 after several dry years the waters fall, become thick, opaque 

 and saline, or entirely disappear. 



15. Colorado Desert. A district, about seventy miles 

 wide by one hundred and forty long, on the southeastern bor- 

 der of the State, belongs to the basin of the Colorado River. 

 It is usually called the " Colorado Desert," because of its bar- 

 ren, sandy soil, and scanty vegetation. In some places the 

 soil is composed of sand, packed together firmly, with a hard 

 and smooth surface, which reflects light like a mirror ; in other 

 places are mountains of loose sand, which are continually shift- 

 ing. In latitude 33 20', and longitude 115 50', a district 

 containing 3,000 square miles is seventy feet below the level 

 of the sea. At one time the Gulf of California extended sev- 

 eral hundred miles farther north than it now does ; an'd the 

 Colorado River, in long ages, deposited on the western edge of 

 its channel so much alluvium as to make banks down to the 

 present head of the gulf, thus cutting off from its connection 

 with the ocean that part of the gulf now dry. The evapora- 

 tion in this desert far exceeds the fall of rain ; so it was not 

 long before this lake was dried up. When the Colorado River 

 is very high, it breaks over its banks about forty miles south- 

 ward from Fort Yuma, and sends a large stream, called New 

 River, northwestward, a distance of a hundred miles or more, 

 to the lowest portion of the desert. 



