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Show CHAP. VI. GEOGRAPHY OF UTAH TERRITORY. 273 ington, while to Britain remained Vancouver's Island and the joint navigation of the Columbia Biver. Under the Hispano-Ameri-cans the actual Utah Territory formed the northern portion of Alta California, and the peace of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluded in 1848 between the United States and Mexico, transferred it from the latter to the former. The present boundaries of Utah Territory are, northward (42° N. lat.), the State of Oregon; and southward, a line pursuing the parallel of N. lat. 37°, separating it from New Mexico to the southeast and from California to the southwest. The eastern portion is included between 106° and 120° W. long. (G.); a line following the crest of the Green River, the Wasach, the Bear Biver, and other sections of the Rocky Mountains, whose southern extremi- • ties anastomose to form the Sierra Nevada, separate it from Nebraska and Kansas. On the west it is bounded, between 116° and 120° W. long., by the lofty crest of the Sierra Nevada; the organization, however, of a new territory, the "Nevada," on the landward slope of the Snowy Range, has diminished its dimensions by about half. Utah had thus 5° of extreme breadth, and 14° of total length; it was usually reckoned 650 miles long from east to west, and 350 broad from north to south. The shape was an irregular parallelogram, of which the area was made to vary from 188,000 to 225,000 square miles, almost the superficies of France. The surface configuration of Utah Territory is like Central Equatorial Africa, a great depression in a mountain land: a trough elevated 4000 to 5000 feet above sea level, subtended on all sides by mountains 8000 to 10,000 feet high, and subdivided by transverse ridges. The " Rim of the Basin" is an uncontinuous line formed by the broken chains of Oregon to the north, and to the south by the little-known sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains; the latter also form the eastern wall, while the Sierra Nevada hems in the west. Before the present upheaval of the country the Great Interior Basin was evidently a Sweetwater inland sea; the bench formation, a system of water-marks, is found in every valley, while detached and parallel blocks of mountain, trending almost invariably north and south, were in geological ages rock-islands protruding from the lake surface like those that now break the continuity of that " vast and silent sea" the Great Salt Lake. Between these primitive and metamorphic ridges lie the secondary basins, whose average width may be 15-20 miles; they open into one another by kanyons and passes, and are often separated longitudinally, like " waffle-irons," by smaller divides running east and west, thus converting one extended strip of secondary into a system of tertiary valleys. The Great Basin, which is not less than 500 miles long by 500 broad, is divided by two large chains, which run transversely from northeast to southwest. The northernmost is the range of the Humboldt River, rising 5000-6000 feet S |
