CHAPTER I.
THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY: A GENERAL VIEW, WITH HINTS TO TOURISTS AND SPORTSMEN.
The State of California extends over somewhat more than ten degrees of latitude.

If it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, its boundaries would include the whole shore-line from Cape Cod to Hilton Head, and its limits would take in the greater portion of ten of the original States.
It contains two great mountain ranges--the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range.

These, running parallel through the State, approach each other so closely at the south as to leave only the narrow Tejon Pass between them; while at the north they also come together, Mount Shasta rearing its splendid snow-covered summit over the two mountain chains where they are joined.
Inclosed within these mountain ranges lies a long, broad, fertile valley, which was once, no doubt, a great inland sea.

It still contains in the southern part three considerable lakes--the Tulare, Kern, and Buena Vista--and is now drained from the south by the San Joaquin River, flowing out of these lakes, and from the north by the Sacramento, which rises near the base of Mount Shasta.

These two rivers, the one flowing north, the other south, join a few miles below Sacramento, and empty their waters into the bay of San Francisco.
That part of the great inland plain of California which is drained by the Sacramento is called after its river.