HYPSOMETEIC ADDENDA. 207 



ern half), as derived from the journal of the Missionary 

 Father Escalante, who attempted (1777) to penetrate the 

 unknown country from Santa Fe of New Mexico to Monterey 

 of the Pacific Ocean. South-east of the Lake Timpanogos is 

 the chain of the Wha-satch Mountains ; and in this, at the 

 place where Humboldt has written Montagues de set gemme, 

 this mineral is found."* 



A great historical interest is attached to this part of the 

 highland, especially to the neighbourhood of the Lake of 

 Timpanogos, which is probably identical with the Lake of 

 Teguayo, the ancestral seat of the Aztecs. This people, in 

 their migration from Aztlan to Tula, and to the valley of 

 Tenochtitlan in Mexico, made three stations at which the 

 ruins of Casas grandes are still to be seen. The first halting- 

 place of the Aztecs was at the Lake of Teguayo, south of 

 Quivira, the second on the Rio Gila, and the third not far 

 from the Presidio de Llanos. Lieutenant Abert found on 

 the banks of the Rio Gila the same immense quantity of 

 elegantly painted fragments of delf and pottery scattered over a 

 large surface of country, which, at the same place, had excited 

 so much astonishment in the missionaries Francisco Garces 

 and Pedro Fonte. From these products of the hand of man, 

 it may be inferred that there was a time when a higher 

 human civilization existed in this now desolate region. Re- 

 petitions of the singular architectural style of the Aztecs, and 

 of their houses of seven stories, are at the present time to be 

 found far to the east of the Rio Grande del Norte ; as, for in- 

 stance, at Taos.f The Sierra Nevada of California is parallel 

 to the coast of the Pacific; but between the latitudes of 34 

 and 41, between San Buenaventura and the Bay of Trinidad, 

 there runs, west of the Sierra Nevada, a small coast chain 

 whose culminating point, Monte del Diablo, is 3674 feet high. 

 In the narrow valley, between this coast chain and the great 

 Sierra Nevada, flow from the south the Rio de San Joaquin, 

 and from the north the Rio del Sacramento. It is in the allu- 

 vial soil on the banks of the latter river that the rich gold- 



* Fremont, Geogr. Mem. of Upper California, 1848, pp. 8 and 67; 

 see also Humboldt, Essai politique, t. ii. p. 261. 



t Compare Abert's Examination of New Mexico, in the Documents 

 of Congress, No. 41, pp. 489 and 581--605, with my Essai pol, t. ii. 

 pp. 241-244. 



