The Western United States Part 6

The waves are eating their way into the land]

Along the whole coast of California there are many old sea beaches and cliffs which the waves abandoned long ago. The highest of these beaches lies so far up the slopes of the mountains bordering the ocean that it makes us wonder what the geography of California could have been like when the region was so deeply submerged.

The lowest and newest terrace is the one shown in Fig. 35, ten feet above the ocean. Each succeeding terrace is less distinct, and the highest, fourteen hundred feet in elevation, can now be distinguished in only a few places. Where the old sea cliffs are best preserved they form a series of broad, flat steps, rising one above the other. Each bench, or terrace as it is commonly called, is a part of an old plain cut out of the land by the waves when the ocean stood at that level. The steeper slope rising at the back is the remnant of the cliff against which the waves used to beat. If we are fortunate, we shall find at its base some water-worn pebbles and possibly a few fragments of sea-sh.e.l.ls. The crumbling of the rocks and the erosive action of the rills are fast destroying the old cliffs, so that in many places they have entirely disappeared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--OCEAN CAVE AT LOW TIDE

Pebbles of a former beach are seen above]

Upon the seaward face of San Pedro Hill, in southern California, there are eleven terraces, rising to a height of twelve hundred feet. What an interesting record this shows! Long ago the land stood twelve hundred feet lower than at present, and the waves beat about San Pedro Hill, nearly submerging it. Then the land began to rise, but stopped after a time, and the waves cut a terrace. The upward movement was continued, with repeated intervals of rest, until the land stood higher than it does now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--WAVE-CUT TERRACES

Point San Pedro, California]

North of San Francisco there stands a terrace fourteen hundred feet above the ocean. Numerous terraces appear along the Oregon coast, but those in Washington are not as high as those in California. It is probable that the land in this region was not so deeply submerged.

The ancient sh.o.r.e lines of British Columbia and Alaska are now deeply buried beneath the ocean, as those of California once were.

The fiords, so common in these countries, are old river valleys which have been drowned by the sinking of the land. The islands were once portions of the coast mountains, but have been cut off by the same process.

Let us picture in our minds the changes in the geography of the Pacific coast of the United States which must have been made by a sinking of the land to a depth of only six hundred feet. We will begin upon the north, at the Strait of Fuca.

Puget Sound once opened to the south as well as to the north, so that the Olympic Mountains formed an island. The broad and fertile Willamette Valley was but an arm of the sea, somewhat like Puget Sound to-day. The body of water which once filled this valley has been called Willamette Sound. The ocean overspread the low Oregon coast, and reached far up the valleys of the Umpqua and Rogue rivers.

But the boundaries of the Klamath Mountains were not greatly changed, for in many places they rise quite abruptly from the present sh.o.r.e line.

All the large valleys of California were flooded, including the San Joaquin-Sacramento valley, which was then a great sound, open to the ocean in the region of the present Strait of Carquinez.

The Coast range was broken up into islands and peninsulas. The islands off the coast of southern California are high and therefore were not entirely submerged. The Gulf of California spread over the Colorado Desert, while from the west the water penetrated inland over the plain of Los Angeles to a point beyond San Bernardino, so that at the San Gorgonio pa.s.s only a narrow neck of land connected the San Jacinto Mountains and the Peninsula Range with the mainland.

If California had been inhabited at this time, the state would not have been noted for orchards and grain-fields, but rather for its mineral wealth. There would have been comparatively little low land fit for cultivation, but the mountains, where almost all the precious metals are found, would have appeared nearly as they do to-day.

The surface of the earth may be divided into the ocean basins and the continental ma.s.ses which rise above them, but we must not make the mistake of thinking that the sh.o.r.e line always corresponds with the border of the continental ma.s.ses. We have learned that the land is almost always moving slowly up or down, so that the sh.o.r.e is continually changing back and forth. At one time the sh.o.r.e line may be far within the borders of the continent, as we have seen was once the case upon our Pacific coast; at another time, if the land should rise, the sh.o.r.e line might coincide with the real border of the continent. By the real border of the continent we mean the line along which the earth slopes down steeply to the abysmal depths of the ocean.

It is an interesting fact that outside the present sh.o.r.e line of California there is a submerged strip of the continent varying from ten to one hundred and fifty miles in width. This strip of land is like a bench upon the side of the continent, and is known as the continental plateau. The water over the plateau is comparatively shallow. Upon one side the land rises, while upon the other there is a rapid descent into the deep Pacific. The surface of the plateau is in general fairly smooth, but in places mountains lift their summits above the water and form islands.

There was a time, thousands of years earlier than the period when California was so nearly covered by the waters of the Pacific, when this land stood far higher than it does now. The coast line was then much farther west, near the border of the submarine plateau.

The Santa Barbara Islands at that time formed a mountain range upon the edge of the continental land. This fact was established by the discovery upon one of the islands of a large number of bones of an extinct American elephant. These animals could have reached the submerged mountains only at a time when there was dry land between them and the present sh.o.r.e line. We should like to know how it came about that these bones were left where they are. Perhaps the land sank so suddenly that the water cut the elephants off from the mainland and compelled them to spend the remainder of their lives upon these islands.

While the land stood so high, some of the larger streams wore deep channels across what is now the submarine plateau. These channels have been discovered by soundings made from the ships of the United States Coast Survey. The largest of the submerged valleys extends through the Bay of Monterey, and runs so close to the sh.o.r.e that it has offered a favorable location for a wharf.

Before the buried valleys upon the northern coast of California were all known, the presence of one of them led to the wreck of a ship. The sh.o.r.e was obscured by fog, but the soundings made by the sailors showed deep water and led them to believe they were a long distance from land, when suddenly the ship drifted in upon the rocks.

The last significant movement of the land of the Pacific border was a downward one. It flooded the mouths of the streams and formed all the large harbors which are of so great commercial importance.

San Francis...o...b..y occupies a great stretch of lowland at the meeting of several valleys of the Coast Ranges and forms the outlet for the most important drainage system of California. If this region had been settled before the subsidence of the land which let in the ocean through the Golden Gate, how the farmers would have lamented the flooding of their fertile lands! But we can understand how small the loss would have been, compared with the advantages to be gained from the magnificent harbor which now exists here. If the land had not sunk the history of the Pacific coast would have been far different.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.--ISLAND ROUNDED BY A GLACIER

Near Anacortes, Puget Sound]

Puget Sound, another very important arm of the ocean, is also a submerged valley, but it has had an entirely different history from that of San Francis...o...b..y. The valley was at one time occupied by a great glacier which came down from the Cascade Range and moved northwest through the sound and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, scouring and polishing the rocks over which it pa.s.sed. A little island near Anacortes (Fig. 36) has been rounded by the action of the ice into a form like a whale's back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.--AN ABANDONED OCEAN CLIFF

Southern California]

The sinking of the land flooded the lower Columbia River and the mouth of the Willamette, so that ocean ships may now go up as far as Portland. The currents and waves soon threw up bars across the mouths of the smaller streams, and formed lagoons behind them.

Ships frequently have difficulty in entering many of the harbors because of the sand bars which have been built up part way to the surface of the water.

It is thought that along some portions of the coast there has recently been a slight upward movement of the land. Figure 37 shows a bit of California coast, near San Juan, where the Santa Fe railroad has laid its tracks for several miles along a strip of abandoned beach, at the base of a cliff against which the waves once beat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.--LIMESTONE CLIFF, QUATSINO SOUND, VANCOUVER ISLAND]

At the northern end of Vancouver island there is a deep arm of the ocean called Quatsino Sound. A limestone cliff upon the sh.o.r.e of this sound (Fig. 38) has been undermined by the dissolving of the limestone, but now the water lacks three feet of rising to the notch which it recently formed.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER

The influence exerted by the various features of the land and water upon the settlement of a new region are not always fully appreciated.

If the entrance to San Francis...o...b..y had been broader and more easily discerned by the early navigators who sailed past it, and if the mouth of the Columbia River had not been obscured by lowlands and a line of breakers upon the bar, the history of western America would probably have been very different.

In the seventeenth century the prospect seemed to be that Spain would control the Pacific Ocean. She claimed, by right of discovery, all the lands bordering upon this ocean and the exclusive right to navigate its waters. Every vessel found there without license from the court of Spain was, by royal decree, to be confiscated.

It is interesting, after all these years and with our present knowledge, to look back and see how unreasonable were the claims of Spain.

In the fifteenth century the extent of the Pacific ocean was not known. In fact, men's ideas as to the distribution of land and water over the earth were so indefinite that it was at first supposed that the islands which Columbus discovered belonged to the East Indies.

The claims of Spain to the Pacific Ocean were based upon its discovery by Balboa, but she never made any serious efforts to enforce them, for the attempt would have involved her in war with all the maritime nations of Europe. Spain lacked the ability to take advantage of the great discoveries which her navigators and explorers had made, and for that reason she merely looked on, though with jealous eyes, when in the eighteenth century the ships of England, France, Holland, and Russia entered the Pacific Ocean with a view to exploration and conquest.

Determined at last to support their claim to the Pacific coast of North America, the Spaniards began to realize the necessity of exploring it more fully and of founding settlements. It was their plan to take possession of the whole region between Mexico upon the south and the Russian trading posts along the sh.o.r.es of Alaska. As exploration by land was impossible because of mountain ranges and deserts, the Spanish adventurers were forced to rely upon the ocean, with all its uncertainties of storm and contrary winds.

Between 1774 and 1779 voyages were made as far north as Queen Charlotte's Island, in lat.i.tude 54. A station was established and held for many years at Nootka Sound, upon the west coast of Vancouver Island. The first expedition pa.s.sed the Strait of Juan de Fuca apparently without seeing it, although there was a rumor to the effect that a broad opening into the land had been discovered by a certain Juan de Fuca in 1592, while he was exploring in the employ of Spain. The lat.i.tude of this opening, as he gave it, nearly corresponds to that of the strait which now bears his name.

For many years the attempt to discover a pa.s.sage around the northern part of America engaged the early navigators upon both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Their desire to find an easy route to India spurred them to constant effort. For a time it was believed that such an opening actually existed, and mariners went so far as to give it a name, calling it the Straits of Anian. The reputed discoveries of Juan de Fuca materially strengthened the general belief in a pa.s.sage to the northward of America.

Vizcaino, in his voyage of 1603, reached lat.i.tude 43 north and thought that he had discovered a great river flowing into the Pacific Ocean. This opening, although south of the point supposed to have been reached by Juan de Fuca, was believed for a time to be the entrance to the long-sought Straits of Anian. During the latter part of the seventeenth century California was represented upon the Spanish maps as an island having Cape Blanco, which Vizcaino discovered and named, as its northern point, and separated from the mainland by an extension of the Gulf of California northward.

To return now to the Spanish explorations, in the latter part of the seventeenth century we find that Heceta, following the first expedition, succeeded in getting as far as Vancouver Island, where, having been parted from an accompanying ship by a storm, he turned southward, pa.s.sing the Strait of Juan de Fuca and keeping close by the sh.o.r.e. In lat.i.tude 46 17' he found an opening in the coast from which a strong current issued. He felt sure that he had discovered the mouth of some large river. Upon the later Spanish maps this was called Heceta's Inlet, or River of San Roque. A glance at the map will show how closely the lat.i.tude given corresponds to the mouth of the river which was discovered later by Captain Gray and named, after his ship, the Columbia.

A short time before Heceta's discovery, Captain Jonathan Carver of Connecticut set out on an exploring tour, partly for the purpose of determining the width of the continent and the nature of the Indian inhabitants. He mentions four great rivers rising within a few leagues of one another, "The river Bourbon (Red River of the North) which empties itself into Hudson's Bay, the waters of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the river Oregon, or River of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of Anian." Carver's descriptions are fanciful, and it is not likely that he ever saw the river which is now known as the Columbia, although there is a possibility that he heard stories from the Indians of a great river upon the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, and invented for it the name Oregon.

In 1787 Meares, an English trader, visited the coast, and sailing southward from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, attempted to find the river San Roque as it was laid down upon the Spanish charts. Reaching the proper lat.i.tude, Meares rounded a promontory and found behind it a bay which he was unable to enter because of a continuous line of breakers extending across it. He became satisfied that there was no such river as the San Roque, and named the promontory Cape Disappointment and the bay Deception Bay. If Meares had entered the bay through the breakers, the English would undoubtedly have made good their claim to the discovery of the Columbia River.

After the Revolution, American trading ships began to extend their operations into the North Pacific. In 1787 two such vessels left Boston, one of them under command of a Captain Gray. After reaching the Pacific, the ships were parted during a storm, and Captain Gray finally touched the American coast near the forty-sixth degree of north lat.i.tude. For nine days he tried to enter an opening which was in all probability the one attempted by Meares. After nearly losing his ship and suffering an Indian attack, he sailed north to Nootka Sound.

Captain Gray returned to Boston, but in 1790 started upon another trading expedition in command of the ship _Columbia_. Arriving safely in the North Pacific, he spent the winter of 1791-1792 upon Vancouver Island.

Vancouver, whose name has been given to the largest island upon the western coast of North America, and who did so much to make known the intricate coast line of the Puget Sound region, arrived upon the scene in 1792. He was authorized to carry on explorations, and to treat with Spain concerning the abandonment of the Spanish claim to Nootka Sound.