280 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
The evening of Thursday e. eo was clear; but we chose to defer 
observation until moonset. our posts at 1" 50™ a. m. of the 
11th, at which time the sky was pe 8 clear, but within fifteen minutes 
clouds eame up and soon obscured every star. We waited in vain till 
about 24 a. m., and hen left the field. 
During the same night, Messrs. Gurdon Evans, John H. Pumpelly, 
Mason C. Weld, being on the top of Mount Carmel, (a peak six 
erg feet high in an adjoining town,) kept a look out for meteors, 
from about 14 a.m. until about 33 a.m. During this time they observ- 
ed trod ollired and sixteen different meteors, after which fog prevent- 
ed further observation. During the last half hour many must have 
been lost. 
V. Miscenitangeous INTELLIGENCE. 
1. California.—A valuable Report on California has recently been 
addressed to the U. S. Senate, and published by government, prepared 
by Mr. J. C. Frémont.* It is stated to be only a brief sketch prelim- 
inary toa general work on Oregon and California; it contains, however, 
a well digested account, physical and geographical, of the regions of 
which it treats. We e gather from it the following faets 
e great chain of mountains which stretches north and south 
through Oregon and California within one hundred and one hundred 
and fifty miles of the coast, is called in Upper California, the Sierra 
Nevada. Its summits are crowded with perpetual snows. It divides 
the country into a coast and an interior section, the two widely differing 
in climate. The former receives the warm ae that blow from the 
Pacific, which through a portion of the year are charged with vapor 
and yer fertilizing rains. The latter expetionces ¢ the cold airs that 
roll down from the heights around. ‘This region, east of the Sierra, is 
GeMed! the Great Basin. It is some five finden miles in length and 
breadth, and between four and five thousand feet above the level of 
the sea ; it is shut in all around by mountains, and contains ie. 
lakes and rivers without outlets. By far the greater part of the 
gion is nearly a desert, yet there are some arable spots. The Sienszy 
is mountainous with intervening plains—the mountains wooded and 
watered, with grass about their bases or lower slopes, the planes arid 
and sterile. These interior mountains run north and south, conform- 
ing to the general trend of the Roc ocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada ; 
they are from two to thousand feet in yi and snow continues 
selves. ‘This position lies on the route across the mountains to Cali- 
* Geographical Memoir sda Upper Pediat PL illustration of his map of 
Oregon and California, ae nv Cuarues Frémonr, uddreste d to the Senate of 
the United States, 67 pp., 8vo, "Weshogon, 184 8. 
