44 Adventures in Scenery 



V-shaped valleys. These are consequent streams. Where the 

 mountains are close to the shore -line short channels with steep 

 gradients extend landward only short distances. Others enter 

 the ocean by comparatively broad mouths, their lower courses 

 having broad floodplains. Farther upstream the valleys become 

 V-shaped. Many such streams flow in torrents down moun- 

 tain sides eroding deep canyons, but slackening in speed over 

 terrace plains toward the sea, and so depositing sediments borne 

 from the high lands, and building up floodplains. 



Rivers Siiperimposed Upon the Landscape 



In striking contrast are such streams as Salinas and Coyote 

 rivers south of San Francisco Bay, and Russian, Eel, and 

 Klamath rivers north of the Bay. These latter enter the ocean 

 over broad floodplains, often meandering widely through large 

 mountain valleys. Their courses are determined by mountain 

 ranges, or by softer and more easily eroded rocks. They are 

 mostly subsequent streams. 



The Salinas River occupies one of the important valleys of 

 southwestern California. The valley of this name, or more 

 properly the Salinas Basin, is 1 50 miles in length and its greatest 

 width is 45 miles. It is a long narrow valley walled in by steep 

 mountain slopes. It is flanked by parallel ridges on the west 

 and by a broad mesa or elevated plain on the east back of which 

 are the crests of the Santa Lucia and Diablo ranges. 



There are some striking features of this river and valley. 

 What is commonly spoken of as the Salinas Valley is not really 

 the valley of the Salinas River at all. The present drainage of 

 the basin is an inheritance from past geologic ages, and not a 

 normal development such as has been described for a newly 

 raised continent, howbeit this part of California has only re- 

 cently, in a geologic sense, been elevated above the ocean, as is 

 shown by the elevated beach marks and wave-cut terraces along 

 the coast. The Salinas River has its source on the eastern slope 

 of the San Lucia Range, 150 miles south of its mouth near 



