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TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PACIFIC COAST.
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and more durable metamorphic rocks of the Klamath Mountains. Excellent views of this plain may be obtained from the Red Bluff and Hayfork stage road, five miles northwest of Hunter's postoffice, and from the mountain roads and trails leading westward from Stephenson's, Miller's, Lowrey's, and Paskenta, in Tehama county.

In the Klamath Mountains.—The plain already noted lies at the southeastern base of the Klamath Mountains, and passes by gradual and rapid transition into the steeper slopes of the mountains in such a way as to indicate that the plain may have once extended across the region now occupied by the Klamath Mountains. Within that group the plain has been recognized thirty miles southeast of Humboldt bay, about Shower's pass, at an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet, and a little farther east, in the even crest of South Fork Mountain, at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Major J. W. Powell informs me that he has observed a deformed baselevel in the Coast Range north of San Francisco. It will doubtless yet be found at many points, but on account of the great deformation which has taken place in the Klamath Mountains and Coast Range since the baselevel was formed, it is difficult to trace.

On the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.—The baselevel we have followed from Elder creek to Pit river was evidently determined by a body of water occupying the Sacramento valley, and traces of a corresponding level might be expected along the opposite shore about the Sierra Nevada.

The western slope of that range may be briefly described as an inclined plane, interrupted only by the narrow cañons of the present streams. Professor J. D. Whitney graphically portrayed the region as follows: "To one standing on some point, not too elevated, but from which a good view of the surface of the country along the flanks of the Sierra may be had, its slope will appear to be quite uniform and unbroken to one looking along a line parallel with the general trend of the range. It will seem, provided the point of view be favorably selected, as if the whole region was a gently descending plain, sloping down to the Great valley at an angle of not more than two or three degrees. And

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