-. 
192 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
Callville, which takes up merchandise and brings back salt, | 
potatoes, and other produce. Aubrey reports having found : 
rich gold placers between Fort Mojave and Callville, near the 4 
mouth of Yampa Creek. 4 
* * Y * * * . 
California, to the Western traveller, means civilisation ; the | 
very name implies “ square meals ” (déjetiner a la fourchette?), 4 
arm-chairs, boot-blacking, and other luxuries; but the man | 
_ who enters it by crossing the Colorado at the Needles would — 
certainly not recognise the Golden State. Two hundred and , 
thirty-five miles of complete desert have to be passed through 
before he reaches the base of the Sierra Nevada. The line 
surveyed by our parties, after leaving the river at an eleva- | 
tion of only 428 feet, ascends again 2,151 feet to Piute | 
Summit, where it enters the Great Basin and then gradually 
descends into a natural depression only 675 feet above the | 
sea. From this basin—called “Perry Sink,” after our | 
botanist—it passes into the Mojave Basin, and at last reaches 
the foot of Tehachapa Pass, where the fertile slopes of the | 
sierra are soon reached. Here the surveyors met agricultural | 
settlements for the first time for many weeks, and found the | 
mountain glades well furnished with fine timber. Their camp | 
In one of the oak groves, which are so abundant here, forms — 
the subject of the accompanying engraving. ; 
The rains, which were so incessant during the month of 
January at San Francisco, extended with diminished force > 
over this southern desert also, and greatly impeded the _ 
progress of the parties; when, however, they had crossed the | 
mountains and tried to march through the central trough of | 
California—the Tulare yalley—they found themselves almost : 
brought to a standstill. General Palmer here left them, and ‘ 
a in company with Colonel Willis, Dr. Parry, and Captain — 
