4 Adventures in Scenery 



he will enjoy the panorama of mountains, rivers, and rocks; 

 he will rejoice in the broad fields; he will smile as he views the 

 orchards and vineyards; and he will laugh aloud as he revels in 

 the great banquet of wild flowers. Few if any of the States 

 of the Union have so complicated, and hence so interesting, a 

 history geologically. The geologic "dates" run from the be- 

 ginning of the continent through the ages to the present. The 

 Beginning probably goes back to Archaean. Shore strands that 

 have been recently elevated above sea mark dates in the uplift- 

 ing of the land. Lands about islands off shore (as the Faral- 

 lones) are not yet above sea, not yet born. 



Geologic Processes Have Been Long at Work 



Rent by mountain upheaval and volcanic outbursts, the crust 

 of the earth has been shattered. Gold has exuded from earth's 

 depths. Oil, segregated in pools, distilled from rocks in which 

 organic matter once accumulated, by earth crumpling and 

 faulting has been brought within reach of the skilled geologist. 

 Upheaval and erosion have long been at work. Erosion follow- 

 ing mountain uplift has caused great canyons (as the Yosemite) 

 to be cut into hard rocks. The great Colorado Desert, a region 

 once covered by an arm of the ocean, has been formed by the 

 filling into the basin of detritus borne by the great Colorado 

 River from the arid plain to the east. Lassen Peak, a volcanic 

 cone, is surrounded by a vast field of lava outpoured from this 

 and other vents. The Sacramento and Feather rivers run in 

 deep gorges cut in the hard beds of lava and other rocks, fed 

 by melting snows and rains from the high mountain range. 



The "backbone" of the State is the Sierra Nevada Range, 

 with the Coast Range forming an encircling elbow on the west. 

 The Great Central Valley, surrounded by mountains, is so vast 

 it is hardly to be called a valley. It is a great basin 9,000 square 

 miles in area, into which has been borne the products of erosion 

 from the surrounding mountains during the lapse of the ages. 

 The Sacramento from the north and the San Joaquin from the 



