OCR Text |
Show 340 APPENDIX. for many leagues around the waters of the Gulf are discoloured by its turbu~ent flood. On. tl~e w~st weep away the mountains of Lower Cahforn1a. These also are a thirsty mass of burned rocks, so dry that ve()'etation finds no resting-place among them. Rut they lift themselves nobly to the clouds, ancf look so venm--able in their baldness, that one feels an ill-defined but absorbing interest in viewing thctn. Man never treads their treeless heights-he finds among them neither food nor drink: nor will they ever resound ":ith the voic~s and. tumults of human life. Still, 1s there not 1n a wilderness of barn~n nwuntains a vast idea of chilling unchangeableness, which inspires a feeling of awe and reverence? The poor Indians thought so. They p~opled them with gods, and trembled when the moon lighted them dimly at night~ and when the elen1ents groaned amoncr them. They stand a vast assen1blage of red and ~rown earth, ex ten din()' in a bold jagged line broader and hio-her, onward and upward, till they fade away amo~g the bright clouds and dewless skies of Lower California: that field of trial for men who would plant in the heart of the Indian the seeds of a holy life; the scenes of the labours, hopes, and sufferings, of Padres Salva Tierra and Ugarte; the burning- place of Padres Co ran do ,s and Tamarars martyrdom ! We will describe that country as it now exists. " The province of Lower California extends from Ca.pe San Lucas to the Bay of Todos Santos, and varies from thirty to one hundred and fifty ntiles in width, a superficial extent almost equal to that of Great Britain; and yet, on account of its barrenness,. never will, from the products of the soil, maintain five hundred thousand people in a 341 state of comfort ordinarily found in the civilized condition. This stat.ernent ~1ay seem surprising to those who are acguau1tod With the geoloo·ical fact that, though it is a volcanic country, the lava and other volcanic matter is decomposing at the u ual rate. But) surprise will cea. e w he~ such per ons are informed that every few years tornadoes sweep over the country with ~uch violence, and bearin()' with them such floods of rain, that whatever of s~il has been in any manner previously formed, is swept into the sea. So that evon those little nooks among the mountains, where the inhabitants from time to time 1nake their fields, and ta k the vexed earth for a scanty subsistence, are liable to be laid bare by the torrents. In case the soil chance to be lodged in some other dell, before it reach the Ocean or the Gulf, and the people follow it to its new location, they find perhaps no water there, and cannot cultivate it. Consequently, they are often driven by dreadful want to some other point in quest of sustenance, where they may not find it, and perish arnono· the parched hio·hlands. For the space of b 1:' twenty or thirty leagues from th~ Cape San Lucas, the air is rendered mild and k1ndly by the seabreezes, and the ground in many parts bei~g wet by little currents of water running from the highlands, is very fruitful. From this section .to Loretto., latitude 26° 16' N., the heat is excessive, the sotl dry and barren, and the surface of the country extremely cragg·y and forbidding. From Loretto northward to 'rodos Santos, the air is 1nore temperate, the w~t~r in the mountains sometimes freezes, and the s01l1s not so ruo·O'ed and full of rocks, but is barren and desolate ~sb that around Loretto. The mean range of temperature in the whole country, in the summer Q3 |