Gold Hill daily news. [volume] (Gold Hill, N.T. [Nev.]) 1863-1882, 1864-03-19
The Interior Basins Of California,
Utah, SC.

Utah, &c.
From tho San Francisco Bulletin, t6th.l
When Fremont, inA December, l84S, first
laid down on the map Of California the Great
Basin of Utah, then portion OF Alta Cali
fornia, it was supposed that it was topo-
graphical feature singular and sole within
the confines Of North America, for no other
one had been hitherto even approximately
proved by geographers or explorers. But the
advance of science and explorations, and the
better preparation of maps since then, and
particularly the wonderful and extended ira
yersings of California miners, and the I'M
portant results to geography and science
which have attended their labors up to 1854,
show that several Of these basins are found
within our ancient frontiers and to the south
of them, and not alone the Basin Of Great
Salt Lake. Not that Fremont's Basin is an
abstract scientific ascertained fact in its dI.
mensions, either--no such thing has ever
been indisputably proven, though there can
be little doubt of its general truth; and so the
world accepts it, though science requires more
careful details. Bancroft's new map Of our
Pacific domain, lately noticed in our columns,
shows all their basins in much better pro-
portions and on much larger and more per-
feet scale than any other yet given to the
public.
The first questions arise, What are they /:
How formed: How old? We do not pro-
fess to be scientifically learned, but we think
that they are old volcanic craters, Of which
we see the irrefutable evidence every fifty
miles in our territory, the most western of
which probably was the basin Of the Great
Tulares, which includes all the little ones
whose waters now flow, as they formerly
doubtless did, into the Bay Of San Francisco,
and were stopped up at the sea where the
Golden Gate now opens to the ocean, gate
shut and locked, it is likely, not very many
hundred years ago. Indian tradition has
handed this down in the obscure Indian way
do we remember the day when our mothers
gave us the last spoonful of pap food !:
We'll, science begins to look upon the Indian
tradition as great world changed fact; and
there is not a large quantity of room to doubt
that il will soon become an accepted truth.
This was the Great Interior Basin OF Cali
fornia, measuring in its great length 3OO
miles north to south, and lO0 miles east to
west, and which in the old times extended
from the Tejon to Shasta, then from above
San Jose to the Geysers Of Napa, and from
the Sierra Nevada foothills TO the ocean
through an old Golden Gate at the Straits Of
Carauines. 1t had for sentinels the peaks OF
Diablo and Tamalpias. Its deepest waters
we're most likely where they are now, and 1t
was withal not very unfathomaolc inland
sea. 1t must have presented magnificent
ASPECT with its mastadons, its elephants, its
races of men II feet high, or Of their two
handed coreners, its immense reptiles after
the figures Of anacondas and alligators, with
animals and immense trees and plants to
sustain the life of the times whel the climate
of California was considerably warmer than
il is now, for its olden farna and fora appear
m have been akin to those Of West Mexico
below Cape San Lucas. This extended inner
sea, it is probable, had but feeble and friable
walls in its narrower parts toward the ocean,
and in the gradual or the convuiSive shak-
inrs or upheavals OF the former times, in
some excessive accumulation of waters from
snow and rain, broke its way through the
western rim and emptied its superabundanccs
into the wide wastes Of the Pacific, and left
the present straits of egrcss and ingress.
The results of the season Of l624-25 and OF
lSGl-62, i. e., November to April and the
general opinion Of intelligent men in the
Country, with the theories of science and the
obscure traditions of the Indians Of the
Great Tulare Basin in all its ramifcationS,
90 yerv far, we conceive, to give substan-
tiality to this hypothesis.
The second Basin Of Alta California, within
which the Basin previously named might
have been lost like an islet Of the sea, was
that beyond the Sierra Nevada to the east
ward, and layed its ripples from the western
banks of the Rocky Mountains to the east
ern slopes of the Sierras and Washoe. Its
northern limits are still loosely ascertained,
hut we NAV take the present assumed ones
ON a paraliel with the northern line Of our
State (42 deCrecs) not far from the lakes of
the plateau of the klamath, and thence run
out east to about 100 miles to the north Of
Great Salt Lake; while to the south it
coursed thousands Of miles until it over
looked the Southern ocean on parallel with
the archipelago of Tiburan; its meridianal
sentinels being the Pineceti crater Of Sonora
and the snowy peaks Of Santa Catalini at the
head of the Termillion Sea.
But this greatest Of inland seas seems to
have existed in the midst and over the vents
of some of the most terrific internal fires and
conyulsive centres of our planet, and con-
stantIy subject to outbursts and upheavalS,
and in one or several Of these it divided it.
self into one larger basin and several inferior
ones, separating itself by considerable rim
or wall on a line with, say the Bay Of San
Francisco, or perhaps the larger Tulare
Lake, which threw of the waters to the south
and raised the ridges Of the Colorado, pro-
badly heaving out of its old bed till it found
new outlets through the Big Canon, and so
to the Gulf-the internal heats evaporating
the shallower waters and leaving the present
Salt Lake and the other numerous strangely
featured lagoons Of the more northern con-
fines. Its length appears to haxe been 1000
miles from north to south, and its greatest
breadth, from the Salt Lake mountains to the
basin of the klamath Lakes, was nearly the
same; while, as it approached the south, it
gradually contracted its eastern and western
boundaries, ranging from 1000 miles to 700,
to 500, to 300, and so, to its narrower
stretches to the old gulf, it fell of to width
Of 60 and 10 miles, or say, assimllating to
the great lakes of Canada and the st. Law
renee river, Through its whole extent rose
through the. waters large and small islands,
which. when they retired or eyaporated, left
those singular detached and solitary ranges
and sierras rising abruptly from plains, the
tremendous deluges securing their bases,
leaving them as we now find them, segregat
ed and disconnected, and gradually pushing
their descending torrents to where they met
the plutonic formations on each shore OF the
gulf. and SO broke through their destructl6le
impediments, filling up the lower levels with
thirsty sands and rocky deserts, as our large
rivers still do on a smaller scale now, and
leaving those curious islands of the Sea Of
Cortcz which present such desolate and
weird aspect to the voyager, reminding him
of that other Vermillion Sea of the Orient,
the home and haunt of enchantment. The
waters were tilted from North to South and
razed from East to West, and turned and
whir,ed in dire convulsive whirlpools, until,
let us say, they were got out of the way, and
klamath, Washoe, Salt Lake, etc.. with all
the mountains Of salt, silver, sulphur, god,
iron, lead and every kind Of mineral under
the sun, when as last lick and twist from
the raging furies they cast up gentle divid
ing ridge on parallel with our Golden Gate,
and SO the waters flowed backwards to the
northern centres, shut in; while those % ss !ne
themselves into smaller and lesser basins TIL
the month of the Colorado is now reacn,u'