CHOROGRAPBHY. ll 
the east by the Sierra Nevada, which ranges meet both at the 
north and the south, is the heart of the state, four hundred 
miles long by fifty wide, reaching. from latitude 35° to 40° 30’. 
It is drained by two rivers: the Sacramento, running from the 
north; and the San Joaquin, from the south. They meet and 
unite in the centre of the basin, at 38°, and break through the 
Coast range to the Pacific, forming the bays of Suisun, San 
Pablo, and San Francisco, on their way. The mountains rise 
steeply from the edge of the valley, which is nearly level, about 
thirty feet above the level of the sea at the junction of the 
rivers, and two hundred feet higher where they issue from the 
mountains. Part of the Sacramento valley shows terraces, the 
farthest from the river being a coarse gravel. The richest soil 
is on the immediate bank. The great body of the valley is 
bare of trees. Its even surface is broken in only one place, 
by the “ Buttes,” a range of volcanic hills, six miles wide by 
twelve iung, with three peaks, about two thousand feet high, 
which rise in lonely abruptness from the middle of the plain, 
in 39° 20’. The general course of the two main rivers of the 
basin lies nearly midway between the two mountain-chains, 
but almost all their tributaries come from the Sierra Nevada, 
which, like the Coast range, has most of its wealth on its western 
slope. In the four hundred miles from Tejon to Shasta there 
are a dozen creeks marked on the map as flowing eastward 
from the Coast range to the San Joaquin and Sacramento; but 
during the summer, three-fourths of them are swallowed up 
in the sands before reaching their mouths. Not one south of 
38° is a permanent stream. From the Sierra Nevada a num- 
ber of rivers run westward. Beginning at the north, we have 
the Pit, Feather, Yuba, American, Cosumnes, Mokelumne, 
Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, San Joaquin, King’s, 
White, and Kern Rivers—all of them considerable streams, 
though some of those in the southern part of the Sacramento 
basin are swallowed up in the sands, in the dry seasons, before 
reaching their mouths. The San Joaquin River does not rise 
at the extreme southern end of the basin, but one hundred 
