Notes on Upper California. 257 



nose but little enlarged and hardly flattened : the mouth large ; 

 the length of the face well-proportioned to the breadth. They 

 were full of jest and merriment ; and it was difficult to obtain any 

 words of their language, as they would soon begin to laugh when 

 questioned, and refuse to reply — thinking it, apparently, all a 

 joke. They valued beads, tobacco, and knives, but refused 

 blankets, and cared nothing for powder. 



This camp was situated about 160 miles in a direct line from 



Sutter's, near latitude 40f° N., or about 120 miles above the 

 Bute. 



October 11. — Soon after leaving 1 camp, we ascended a terrace 

 of twenty feet, and half a mile beyond reached the upper prairie, 

 here reduced to a collection of hills, of nearly uniform height, 

 and showing sides of stratified earth and gravel, rather firmly com- 

 pacted. The streams and rills of the rainy season, had carried on 

 the process of excavation and removal, until the former plain was 

 only traceable in the uniform height of the hills. Large streams 

 (dry when passed by us) had made valleys 300 feet in width, which 

 were strewed with loose rounded stone. The surface of the region 

 was nothing but gravel and coarse pebbles, and proved extremely 

 hard travelling for the horses. After a while the hills became 

 wider undulations, yet the character of the country was the same j 

 the whole was arid, but bore some shrubbery and scattered oaks. 

 This region fronts the bottom land of the Sacramento with slopes 

 from 60 to. 100 feet in height, and gradually rises in the course 

 of a few miles back, to 150 or 200 feet. It is properly the upper 

 terrace of the valley. 



The pebbles were mostly siliceous, many of red jasper, inter- 

 sected by veins of quartz, and others of milky quartz or fragments 

 of the talcose rock formation. There were a few of porphyritic 

 basalt and puddingstone. After fifteen miles over the pebbly 

 hills, we descended to the lower flats, and encamped near the 

 Sacramento, a noble stream 100 yards or more wide, flowing 

 placidly along between thinly wooded banks. This lower plain 

 proved to be fine soil, though dry from the summer's drought, 

 and mostly burnt over. The stones of the prairies were gene- 

 rally varnished with a pyroligneous oil arising from the burning of 

 the grass. This oil had a smoky and acrid taste. 



Octobe?* 12. — Just below the encampment, the upper prairie 

 bordered the river with a perpendicular bluff of 100 feet. We 

 ascended it, and for four miles travelled over its gravelly undula- 

 ting surface, occasionally descending into its intersecting valleys. 

 At one place we found one terrace of thirty-five feet — a second, 

 300 yards beyond, of twenty-five feet, and 200 yards beyond this 

 lay the river, between its banks of twenty feet. The lower plain 

 ^vas mostly a light-colored loam of sandy appearance, in this, the 

 dry season. 



Second Series, Vol. VII, No. 20.— March, 1849. 33 



