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SIXTEEN MONTHS THE GOLD DIGGINGS. CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.
California extends from Oregon to Sonoma and Lower California, and
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. It shows a coast-front
extending ten degrees of latitude, from the thirty-second to the
forty-second parallel. To the voyager it presents only high and
forbidding headlands ? mountain ranges which step down from the
broad table-lands in the interior, and push a bold foot far out
into the waters of the ocean. This country possesses 420,000 square
miles, and is remarkable for its lofty ranges of mountains, among
which lie interspersed limited but beautiful valleys and more
extensive plains. Its diversity of climate and soil is as great as
the varieties of its surface. The channel which forms the entrance
into this singular country from the Pacific is two miles in width
and three in length, and is opposite, under the same parallel of
latitude, to the Straits of Gibraltar. 10 GEOGRAPHY OF CALIFORNIA.
After passing through this channel, the lowest of the series of
bays, that of San Francisco, opens broadly before you, dotted with
several islands clothed with verdure, and rocks white with their
coating of guano, around and upon which hover and settle immense
flocks of sea-fowls. Above the ranges of hills, in the east, rises
the distant Sierra, crowned till July with its winter snows. The
bay opposite the city is twelve miles wide, and, with the bays
above, contains anchorage ground sufficient to accommodate every
vessel, from the ship of war down to the schooner, in the whole
world. In the north, the bay contracts into a narrow passage, and
opens soon into a second spacious bay, ten miles in diameter. Still
another strait connects this bay with a third, containing numerous
islands,...
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