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Show HYPSOMETRIC ADDENDA. 221 Teguayo, the second on the Rio Gila, and the third not far from the Presidio de Llanos. Lieutenant Abert found on the banks of the Gila the same immense number of fragments of pottery ornamented with painting, and scattered over a considerable tract of ground, which had astonished the missionaries Francisco Garces and Pedro Fonte in that locality. These remains of the products of human skill are supposed to indicate the existence of a former higher civilization in these now solitary regions. Remains of buildings in the singular style of architecture of the Aztecs, and of their houses of seven stories, are also found far to the eastward of the Rio Grande del Norte; for example, in Taos. (Compare Abert's Examination of New Mexico, in the documents of Congress, No. 41, pp. 489 and 581-605, with my Essai pol. t. ii. pp. 241-244.) The SierraN evada of California is parallel to the coast of the Pacific ; but between the latitudes of 34° and 41 o, between San Buenaventura and the Bay of Trinidad, there runs, on the west of the Sierra Nevada, another (smaller) coast chain, of which Monte del Diablo, 3448 French, 367 4 English feet high, is the culminating point. In the narrow valley, between this coast chain and the great Sierra Nevada, flow from the south the Rio de San Joaquin, and from the north the Rio del Sacramento, on the banks of which, in rich alluvial soil, are the rich gold-washings now so much resorted to. · I have already referred, p. 43, to a hypsometric levelling, and to barometric measurements made from the junction of the Kanzas River with the Missouri to the Pacific, or throughout the immense extent of 28 degrees of longitude. Dr. Wislizenus has now successfully continued the levelling began by me from the city of Mexico, in the Equinoctial Zone, to the north as far as Santa Fe del Nuevo Mexico, in lat. 35° 38'. It will be seen, perhaps, with surprise, that the elevated plain which forms the broad crest of the Mexican Andes is far from sinking down, as had long been supposed to an inconsiderable height. I give here for the first time, according to the measurements which we at present possess, the elevations of several points, forming a line of levelling from the city of Mexico to Santa Fe, which latter town is less than four German (sixteen English) geographical miles from the Rio del Norte. 19* |