CHORBOGRAPEY. 13 
The most notable of these are the Alviso or Guadalupe slough, 
at the head of San Francisco Bay; the San Antonio slough, 
opposite San Francisco city; the Petaluma, Sonoma, and Napa 
sloughs, opening into San Pablo Bay; and Suisun and Pacheco 
sloughs, opening into Suisun Bay. 
§ 11. Zudle-Land—Along the borders of these bays, and of 
the Tulare and Kern Lakes, and of the Sacramento and San 
Joaquin Rivers, there are extensive tracts of swamp-lands, usu- 
ally called “tulelands,” from the tule, a species of rush which 
grows on them. Nearly all the tule-land west of Sacramento 
and Stockton, to which points the tides extend, are salt marsh- 
es; but north of Sacramento, and south of Stockton, the tule- 
lands are fresh-water swamps. The extent of this marshy land 
varies in different seasons ; but at my estimate, there are eighty 
square miles on the borders of San Francisco Bay, eighty on 
San Pablo Bay, sixty on Suisun Bay, two hundred on the Sac- 
ramento River, one hundred on the San Joaquin, two hundred 
on the Tulare Lake, and the slough leading from it, and one 
hundred and twenty south of Tulare Lake—making eight 
hundred and forty square miles in all. 
8 12. Sierra Nevada.—The Sierra Nevada is four hundred 
and fifty miles long (in California) and seventy wide, with a 
height varying from five thousand to eight thousand feet above 
the sea-level. Nearly its whole width is occupied with its 
western slope, which descends to a level of three hundred. feet 
above the ocean ; whereas the slope on the eastern side is only 
five or six miles wide, and terminates in the Great Basiu, which 
is itself from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea. 
Nearly all the snows and rains that visit the Sierra Nevada fall 
on its western slope, which has all the large rivers. These 
rivers run westward, at right angles to the course of the chain, 
and ent it into steep hills and deep ravines, cafions, and chasms. 
The valleys are all small, and it is rare to see a hundred acres 
of level, tillable land, even on the banks of the largest moun- 
tain-streams. The greater part of the Sierra Nevada is cov- 
ered with timber. The oak, manzanita, and nut-pine, grow to 
