CHAPARRAL. ia 
This forest must have covered all of Point Loma, since it is described 
as being three leagues long and one-half league wide. The Indians 
say that these trees were live oaks, and that they were afterwards 
destroyed by fire. The Franciscan missionaries who came to Cali- 
fornia in 1796 said that the site of San Diego was covered with 
trees. Capt. Bogart, visiting San Diego in 1834, said that the site 
of that point and a portion of Point Loma was covered with a thick 
growth of oak, and that the trees were used by the native popula- 
tion and by the crews of trading vessels for tanning purposes. There 
seems to be a conflict between this testimony and that of the English 
navigator, Capt. George Vancouver, who, on November 27, 1793, 
visited San Diego Harbor and said of Point Loma that “ some bushes 
grew on it, but no trees of large size.” Dana, in his “ Two Years 
Before the Mast,” said that in 1834 Point Loma was covered with 
trees, but afterwards in his diary said that he had been mistaken 
and that they were only bushes. He was doubtless deceived by five 
genera of chaparral which may have attained in this locality a 
height of 10 feet, with dense and spreading crowns. These genera 
are Adenostoma, Rhus, Hriodictyon, Ceanothus, and Heteromeles. 
Certain maps made by the early cartographers show Punta de los 
Arboles (Point of Trees), at a location immediately north of San 
Diego. It is here that the rare pine, Pinus torreyana, was discovered 
growing near the ocean, and it is the only region along this portion 
of the coast where conifers approach the shore. The name given 
would indicate that the early navigators did not commonly find trees 
along the coast, and that Punta de los Arboles was an exception 
worthy of mention upon the maps. There is no projection on the 
shore line to warrant the title “ point.” The place is shown upon 
more recent maps as * Pine Hill.” 
On the whole these early records seem to show that the conifers ap- 
proached this portion of the coast at only one point, as they do to-day ; 
that trees, probably cottonwood, oak, and possibly sycamore, were 
growing on Point Loma and the site of San Diego, though these have 
since been destroyed and the chaparral has taken possession of the 
areas, and that chaparral and treeless areas prevailed generally along 
the coast, as they do to-day. 
GEOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS IN THE CHAPARRAL AREA. 
The area within the United States covered by chaparral is shown 
upon the accompanying map (PI. VIII) and amounts to about 
5,500,000 acres. It will be noticed that there are several small iso- 
lated tracts on the west side of the Sierra Nevada. In general, how- 
ever, the chaparral protects about three-fourths of the upper water- 
sheds of the streams along the coast in California for a distance, 
along the axes of the Sierras, of 450 miles. 
