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HOW GOLD, SILVER AND SOIL WERE PRODUCED. 547

mineral stores of the most valuable and attractive kind. While the rocks were yielding to vast pressure by opening gaping cracks and fissures, and the sea of fire beneath was thrusting up its foaming waves through every deep crevice, the intense heat developed in their neighborhood drove chemical agencies into the liveliest action. Hot alkaline solutions of silica and other rock filled the opened cracks which lava did not reach and collected, apparently, by chemical attraction gold, silver and other minerals from the heated region about them into these crevices. They cooled in this position and formed veins, lodes and nuggets of precious metals, and made the Rocky Mountain region in general one enormous mine of incalculable wealth.

This elevation, as has been said, was so gradual that the general floor was broken only along the lines of higher elevation. Extensive regions remained comparatively low between, or outside, the ranges, and the grading down of the elevations by the atmosphere, snow, ice and running waters, gathered in them a remarkably large mass of earth to form a rich soil. Central California is a great basin, some 450 miles long by 65 broad, bounded by the Sierra Nevada on the east, and the Coast Range on the west. The great Utah Basin is several times larger, though divided into two unequal parts by the Wahsatch Range. Many basins besides, various in size and elevation, are found over the whole region. Placed so as to receive large quantities of rock ground into fine earth, beyond measure rich in chemical material for the support of vegetation, their productiveness is only limited by the supply of surface moisture. This is very unevenly, and, in many cases, most inconveniently furnished. Yet the mountain ranges are huge condensers and collect vast quantities of moisture from the clouds, which they generally relieve of their burden in the form of snow. This, melting and falling in mountain torrents into the basins and valleys, forms a multitude of streams and lakes which may be distributed by

man when his needs call for it, so as to secure the larger part of the value, perhaps, of the extremely rich stores of agricultural material. Parts of the general region-especially the northern part of the Pacific Slope proper, westward of the higher ranges are well watered as it is, and extremely productive with moderate labor.

Such, in general terms, is the Mountain Empire bounding the Great Valley on the West and bordering the Pacific Ocean. The river systems are naturally as disconnected as the agricultural areas, and available for purposes of commerce only to a limited degree. Yet, joined to the long line of coast, they are destined to great and most valuable uses. California, not very far from its center, has a break in its coast line, of no great width, but answering all the purposes of ocean commerce, and a deep, land-locked bay extends in various arms far inland, furnishing as good a port and medium of communication with the central valley and the outside world as could well be conceived. The Sacramento River receives the collective waters of the upper valley and conveys them to this bay, the San Joaquin performing the same office for the lower valley. The regions about the bay are therefore the lowest in the valley, and the rivers serve the purposes of internal commerce and communication for some distance on their lower courses, railroads connecting the more distant parts with the center.

Oregon and Washington possess a large river in commonthe Columbia. By its various branches, it drains several extensive regions both north and south in the interior basin, or plateau, between the mountains, collecting waters from the borders of the Utah basin southward, and also from British Columbia far to the north. Several hundred miles of its course are navigable, though interrupted by rapids at different points. The distance of unbroken navigation from its mouth is 160 miles.

The Colorado River is the third large stream of the Pacific

THE IDEAL OF DESOLATION.

549

Slope. It drains a very large region, much of which is a high rocky plateau. It is capable of being used as a commercial highway several hundred miles from the point where it empties into the Gulf of California, at least during high water. Its mouth is near, but not within, the limits of the United States. The territory it drains is the driest, and, in some respects, most forbidding on the Slope; yet, so far as can now be estimated, it is the richest in minerals, and its valleys and plateaus, wherever they can be irrigated, are of remarkable fertility.

year.

Thus, this vast mountain region is one of great extremes, of violent contrasts. At first sight this sea of mountains, rocky plateaus and rainless basins seemed a desert-almost the ideal of desolation. The few valleys and oases in the midst of bare rock and alkali deserts appeared practically inaccessible, at least for purposes of useful intercourse with the civilized world, and seemed to be capable of supporting but a very limited number of human beings from their own resources. Even the approaches to it wore a forbidding look. The vast plains of the Western Valley were so lightly watered as to bear the appearance of a desert the larger part of the Arid and hot in summer, the fierce blasts of the Arctic North swept over them in winter. California, lying on the coast, seemed more favored; yet, the portion directly on the ocean, only part of which received sufficient moisture in all the seasons, was limited by a range of mountains several thousand feet high not far inland, and its central basin received abundant rains only during the winter months, the rainless summer parching and destroying vegetation over much of its broad expanse, and seeming to bid defiance to the agriculturist, except in favored spots. Stock might find abundant pasturage during the rainy season, but must be limited to such numbers as could be supported by the less arid uplands during the drier seasons.

The northern coast seemed to be more favored, the river

system of the Columbia giving readier access to the interior and the form of the continent in the North opening the region back of the Coast Range somewhat more fully to the moisture-laden winds from the warm ocean current that sweeps across the North Pacific from the Indian Ocean past China and Japan. Here, next the ocean, was an immense forest, yet bounded on the east by lofty mountains and a vast breadth of lava fields, rocky valleys, range after range of mountain heights, and the sterile plains of the Missouri beyond. The distance by sea to civilized lands seemed to place any extensive use of the valuable timber and fertile. soil in an indefinite but far-distant future.

Such was the apparent condition of the mountain and coast areas to the eye and apprehension of the European, so far as he was able to learn during the sixteenth century, and such it continued to appear for about three hundred and fifty years to civilized man.

CHAPTER II.

ARIZONA THE LAND OF PLATEAUS.

The early civilizations of North America were more embarrassed in growth and more frequently broken up altogether than those of the Old World. The more imperfect development of those which continued to flourish must have been due in part to unhealthy disturbance; and the relics of lost races, the very memory of which had vanished even from the localities where they left what has not yet perished of the record of their organized industry, show the greater disadvantages that attended progress on the Western than the Eastern Continent. America was too simple and broad in the outlines of its more favored regions, and these were too readily overrun by wild highland tribes, to favor a strong and many-sided growth.

Tartary, Scythia and Germany always swarmed with roving, restless tribes, whose character and manners were as stern as their climate. They were always a terror and danger to the civilizations further south, but the readiest openings to their wanderings were east and west. High mountain ranges on the north protected Oriental, Greek and Roman civilization. The Rocky Mountain plateau seems to have been as prolific in fierce hunter tribes as those Old World regions in rude wandering warriors. They grew up there robust, healthy and aggressive, disposed to seek a more favored region, but finding it only in the direction of a progressive people.

As the Teuton, Hun, Slavic and Tartar tribes of Northern Europe and Asia from the beginning of history were a constant menace to the warm, rich countries of the South, so

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