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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 57 point to point." (Compare Erman's Reise urn die Erde, Abth. i. bd. iii. s. , Abth. ii. bd. i. s. 386, witb. his Archiv fUr wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, bd. vi. s. 671.) The Rocky Mountains which sink down towards the Mackenzie River, which is co-vered a large portion of the year with ice, and the highlands from which single snow-clad summits rise, are altogether di tinct from the more westerly and higher mountains of the coast, or the chain of the Californian Maritime Alps, the Sierra Nevada de California. However ill selected the now generally used name of the Rocky l\Iountains, to designate the most northerly continuation of the 1\Iexican Central Chain, it does not appear to me desirable to change it, as has been often proposed, for that of the Oregon Chain. Although these mountains do indeed contain the sources of Lewis's, Clark's, and North Fork, the three chief branches which form the mighty Oregon, or Columbia River, yet this river also breaks through the Californian chain of snow-clad Maritime Alps. The name of Oregon District is also employed politically and officially for the smaller territory west of the Coast Chain, where Fort Vancom ·er and the Walahmutti settlements are situated, and therefore it is the more de irable not to give the name of Oregon either to the Central or the Coast Chain. This name is connected with a most singular mistake of an eminent geographer, M. 1\lalte Brun: Reading on an old Spanish map, "And it is not yet known (y aun se ignora) where the source of this river" (the river now called the Columbia) " is situated," he thought he recognized in the word ignora the name of Oregon. (See my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, t. ii. p. 314.) The rocks which, where the Columbia breaks through the Chain, form the Cataracts, mark the continuation of the Sierra Nevada de California from the 44th to the 47th degree oflatitude. (Fremont, Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, 1848, p. 6.) This northern continuation comprises the three colossal summits of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helen's, which rise more than 14,540 French or 15,500 English feet above the level of the sea. The height of this Coast Chain, or Range, far exceeds, therefore, that of the Rocky Mountains. "During a journey of eight months' duration which was made along the Maritime Alps," says |