60 
GEOLOGY 
shore. It includes colonel Fremont's Great Basin, or the Californian desert of the trappers; the Sierra 
Nevada proper, the Coast Range of California and Oregon, the Umpqua and Shasty mountains be- 
tween California and Oregon, the Cascade Range of Oregon, and finally the fine and fertile Prai- 
ries of California and Oregon. 
The Californian desert, or Great Basin, is composed of a series of mountain chains running from 
north to south, of which the Sierra Nevada is only the most western chain. The mean elevation 
of this part of the country is from three to four thousand feet (the peaks attain to eight or nine 
thousand feet); the soil is arid, sandy and dry. Rivers and lakes, although quite numerous, are 
cut off from all communication with the sea, the dryness of the atmosphere and the e.xcessive eva- 
poration exhausting their waters long before they reach the vicinity of the ocean , and giving to 
them a salt and brackish flavor. The traveller across the desert, on reaching the beautiful Prairies 
of California, beholds one of the most striking contrasts possible. After having followed for weeks 
a road scarcely marked by a trace in the sand and the rocks, where the vegetation is limited to 
a few bushes of Artemisia (A. tridentata, A. Canadensis), long and thorny stems of the Fouqueria splen- 
dens and spinosa and the Cacti, Cereus giganteus , Mamillaria aggregata, Echinocactus Engelmanni, and 
Opuntia arhorcscens ■, on descending the passes of the Sierra Nevada he finds himself at once with- 
out transition , in plains of perpetual verdure , that rival in beauty and productiveness the classic 
plains of Lombardy. The Sacramento, San Joachin, Willammette and Columbia rivers, water this 
colossal garden , and maintain its continual freshness. 
The mountains of the Californian desert and the Sierra Nevada, although generally less ele- 
vated than the Rocky mountains, have a more imposing and grandiose aspect. They have an alpine 
look , and are indeed the only mountains in the United States that can he compared to the Alps. 
The Rocky mountains have rounded peaks; their summits are dome-shaped, like the ballons of the 
Vosges-, in a word they bear the impress of antiquity, the geological ages have worn them away 
and softened their asperities, while those of the Sierra Nevada are covered with sharp peaks, and 
needles slender and pointed like gigantic cathedral spires. It is comparatively speaking but a short 
time since the appearance of the Nevada Range, we see that they have but slightly experienced 
the destructive action of the various agents in activity on the surface of our planet. 
The Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington Territory contains several active volcanoes and 
some that are extinct, the height of which exceeds that of the highest summits of the Rocky moun- 
tains, for they reach 14,000 and 15,000 feet; but this system is only a secondary branch and ap- 
pendage of the Californian Sierra Nevada. The Umpqua and Shasty mountains cross the Sierra 
Nevada and run from north-west to south-east, like the Sierra de Mogoyon; they are less ele- 
vated than the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range, not exceeding 6,000 feet. 
The Coast Range, extending the whole length of the coast, is a very unimportant system of 
mountains, only rising a few hundred feet above the Pacific. The Golden Gates of the bay of 
San Francisco intersect a part of this system of mountains, and Monte Diablo seen from afar like 
a sentinel posted in advance to guard the Placers of the Sierra Nevada, also belongs to the Coast 
Range. 
This Pacific region may also justly be called the gold region , and with the same reason the 
Atlantic may take the name of the coal region, and the central region is the land of gypsum and 
