CALIFORNIA.

tween the Mississippi and the Pacific coast. While in some mea-
sure they run round the tremendous mountain system of the inte-
rior of the continent, they bear as close to it as they can. They
run but little below the 35th parallel, which is only two degrees
south of the southern line of Kansas.

CALIFORNIA.

At Aubry, as before remarked, the line of the road enters the State
of California. Thence its course is westward until it turns the south-
ern extremity of the Sierra Nevada range, and thence northwest all
the way up the great valley of Southern California, to the Bay of San
Francisco, a distance of between four and five hundred miles.

This is known to be one of the finest valleys on the continent. The
Sierra Nevada bounds it on the northeast, the Coast Range on the
southwest —the mountains, the valley, and the coast all running in
parallel lines. The average width of this valley is not much less than
one hundred miles; and although it has not yet been twenty years in
the possession of people who did anything to develop its resources, and
although it is cut off from the ocean by the Coast Range of mountains,
and is destitute of any navigable rivers, except for a short distance
southeast of the Bay of San Francisco, it is already renowned through-
out the world for its extraordinary productiveness —its wheat, its
grapes, and many other things. Its only commercial avenues are
wagon-roads; yet within a year bread made from wheat which grew
in that valley has been on our tables here-in Pittsburgh.

Of Southern California as a grape-producing country, Mr. Hittel
remarks:

“California vineyards produce ordinarily twice as much as the vine:
yards of any other grape district, if general report be true. The
grape crop never fails as it does in every other country. Vineyards
in every other country require more labor, for here the vine is not
trained to a stake, but stands alone.”

Mr. Hall remarks: “The grape region extends from the southern
boundary a distance of 595 miles north, with an average breadth from
east to west of about 100 miles.” This area extends a considerable
distance up the Sacramento river, which flows southward through the
same valley, and breaks through the coast range almost directly east
of San Francisco.

_The large county of Los Angelos, which is the second county that
our road reaches after entering the State, is the principal vine-grow-
ing district in California. In 1864 it had 3,570,000 vines. A Califor-
nia paper of 1865 mentions a vine growing at Oroville, on the western