6 
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY. 
To the south of the Golden Gate this ridge is again broken through by a stream—the Pajaro— 
which, draining a portion of the Santa Clara plain, wends its way to Monterey Bay, dividing the 
ridge into the Santa Cruz and Gavilan mountains. The Gavilan mountains take their name from 
its most notable peak, which looms up a sharp cone, indicating the turning point of the Pajaro, 
and giving a landmark quite as prominent and unmistakable as Monte Diablo. These moun¬ 
tains trend off on the prolongation of the Santa Cruz mountains, forming the boundary between 
the Santa Clara and the great Salinas plains; and by gradually widening and impinging upon the 
Monte Diablo mountains, the axes of the two are apparently lost, hut embraced within an elevated 
district lying to the west of the Tulare lake and close under the Santa Emilia mountains of the 
Tejon. 
Proceeding westward from the Gavilan mountains, we find the third ridge extending from 
the Bay of Monterey off to the southeast even beyond where the two preceding appear to termi¬ 
nate. The axis of this ridge is broken through by the Salinas river, dividing it into the two 
masses—the Salinas mountains on the north, and the San Jose mountain on the south. The 
Salinas mountains are irregular and much broken, and are separated from the Gavilan by an 
extensive plain sloping northward to the Bay of Monterey. Ascending this plain, it is 
narrowed down to a valley which partakes somewhat of the character of a canon, where the stream, 
by a slight change in direction, is found to cross the axis of the ridge. Here there is a 
breaking up and apparent termination of this ridge, but it will be perceived that it is reproduced 
in the San Jose ridge beyond, which becomes in its extent rugged and precipitous, having an 
extensive elevation of about four thousand feet. To the west of the San Jose, and separated 
from it by the valleys at the headwaters of the main Salinas, lies the fourth ridge, (the Santa 
Lucia,) which abuts on the ocean in the vicinity of Punta Gorda and trends off, occupying, 
in its course and by its adjuncts, the most conspicuous position among its neighbors, preserving 
its direction and identity to a greater extent than all preceding, and becoming really the main 
axis of the chain stretching off to the peninsula of Lower California, forming, below the junction 
of the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range, the boundary between districts, one as sterile and inhos¬ 
pitable as the other is beautiful and inviting. It is, however, much broken, and bears in its 
course different local names. It not only forms the western limit to the valleys of the upper 
Salinas, but plays the same part with reference to another plain and valley lying beyond and in 
the prolongation of the Salinas plain. This new plain is called the Cuyama, and is sepa¬ 
rated from the head of the Salinas by low transverse divides which unite the two bounding 
ridges. The Cuyama plain is drained by the Rio Santa Maria, which, heading in the Santa 
Emilia mountain, meanders off to the northwest, and breaks through this intervening ridge by 
a narrow, tortuous, and exceedingly rugged canon to the plain lying between it and the coast, 
the Guadalupe Largo. That portion of this ridge to the north of the canon is divided longi¬ 
tudinally by the Wasna creek into two ridges, one of which is called the Napoma Ridge, and 
the other the Santa Lucia. To the south of this canon, and opposite the Cuyama plain, the 
ridge is again divided longitudinally by a tributary of the Santa Maria into the Cuyama 
mountains and San Rafael mountains—the former being the boundary of the plain from which 
the name is derived, and the latter forming the eastern limit of the Santa Inez valley. These 
two ridges unite beyond, near the sources of the Santa Inez and San Buenaventura rivers, and 
then the mass bears the name of Santa Cruz. 
The fifth ridge, Santa Inez mountains, is, as before remarked, apparently unlike the prece¬ 
ding in the feature of parallelism, which they all possess in a great degree throughout their whole 
