300 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
quakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate 
it to be a mere mass upheaved from the sea, and burned to 
cinders. The range of mountains that comes up through Low 
er California, runs on northwardly into Upper California, at 
an average distance of sixty or seventy miles from the sea, till 
it falls away into low hills south of the bay of San Francisco. 
This, also, is a volcanic range; though not so strongly marked 
to that effect in the Upper as in the Lower Province. 
Some portions of this range are lofty. That part lying 
east and south-east of El Pueblo de los Angelos, is tipped 
with perpetual snows. But the greater part of it presents a 
base covered up to more than half of the whole elevation 
with pine and cedar forests; the remaining height being com¬ 
posed of bare, dark, glistening rocks, lying in confused masses, 
or turreted in the manner observed on the Black Hills, in the 
Great Prairie Wilderness:—spires, towers and battlements 
lifted up to heaven, among which the white feathery clouds 
of beautiful days rest shining in the mellow sun. 
The Snowy Mountain range is perhaps the boldest and 
most peculiar of the Californian highlands. Its western ter¬ 
minus is Cape Mendocino, a bold snow-capped headland, 
bending over the Pacific in 40° N. Latitude. Its western ter¬ 
minus is in the Wind River Mountains, Latitude 42° N., about 
seven hundred miles from the sea. Its peculiarity consists in 
what may be termed its confused geological character. Near 
the sea its rocks are primitive, its strata regular. A hun¬ 
dred miles from the sea where the President’s range crosses 
it, everything is fused—burned; and at the distance of seventy 
miles northeastwardly from the Bay of San Francisco, a 
spur comes off’ with a lofty peak, which pours out immense 
quantities of lava, and shoots up a flame so broad and bright 
as to be seen at sea, and to produce distinct shadows at eighty 
miles’ distance. Here is an extensive tract of this range which 
has been burned, and whose strata have been torn from their 
natural positions; displaying an amalgamated mass of primi¬ 
tive rocks, ex loco , mingled with various descriptions of 
