336 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
over little flowering prairies, among the groves on the low- 
lands; noble columns of nature’s architecture, supporting 
cond-formed capitals of growing, living green ! A land of 
the wildest enchantment! The hooting owl and the cuckoo 
are there at midnight, and the little birds twitter to the bab¬ 
bling rivulets of the vales. Far reaching away to the north 
are piled the naked cold summits of the Snowy ridge. This 
is a vast slope of excellent land, which will, when subdued, 
equal any other in the world. The great Bay of San Fran¬ 
cisco on the south, and the Bay of Bodega and the Ocean on 
the west, give it a position as a farming and commercial dis¬ 
trict wdiich is scarcely surpassed by the valley of the Clamet, 
or of the San Joaquim and Sacramento. 
Stretching across the north of these splendid regions are the 
Snowy Mountains. This range of highlands forms a natural 
boundary between the Californias and Oregon. But the 
ignorance of our negotiators with Spain, or their criminal 
neglect of duty, gave us the parallel of 42° N., instead of this 
noble barrier of craggy ice and snow. Consequently the 
Californias extend beyond these mountains, and embrace the 
valley which lies between the Snowy range and a spur of the 
President’s range, which puts out westward from Mount J. Q. 
Adams, in Latitude 42° 10'. The average height of these 
hills is about 2700 feet above the sea. This vale is about 
fifty miles wide and one hundred in length. The Clamet 
river waters it. This stream has two principal sources; the 
one among the snows of Mount Monroe, in Latitude 43° 20 
and about one hundred miles from the sea ; the other in a 
beautiful mountain-lake, with a surface of about tw r o hundred 
square miles, lying further south. Both these branches are 
furious mountain torrents, tumbling down lofty acclivities, 
into little valleys, where they run a few miles with a compa¬ 
ratively peaceful current, and then dash and roar again over 
another precipice; and so continue till they reach their con¬ 
fluence. Thence the Clamet moves on with a heavy whirling 
flood, until within thirty miles of the sea, where it breaks 
