The highest of these peaks, Mount Whitney, is, according to Prof. Whitney, at least 200 feet higher than any measured in the Rocky Mountains by the topographers of the Hayden survey. A writer in the Virginia (Nevada) _Enterprise_ says: “Whitney stands a lordly creation amid a rugged and grand company of companion peaks, for his nearest neighbor, Mount Tyndall, rises 14,386 feet, and Mount Kah-we-ah, but a few miles off, is 14,000 feet.” Whitney affords “the widest horizon in America; a dome of blue, immeasurable, vast sweeps of desert lowlands, range on range of mighty mountains, grand and eloquent; grace, strength, expansion, depth, breadth, height, all blended in one grand and awful picture. And as the eye takes in these features, a sense of soaring fills the mind, and one seems a part of the very heavens whose lofty places he pierces. The breadth and compass of the world grows upon the mind as the mighty distances flow in upon the view like waves of the sea.... The best that can be said or written but suggests; the eye alone can lead the mind up to a true conception of so mighty and marvelous a group of wonders.” It is true that one standing upon the dividing ridges of the Rio Grande, Arkansas, Colorado or Platte, is charmed by the views presented of far reaching plains and noble mountains, but it is doubtful if any one view can be found in North America so grand and thrillingly sublime as may be seen in the Sierra Nevadas. The scenery of the Yellow Stone and of the Colorado canyon have characteristic wonders that are _sui generis_; but those localities are not desirable for continuous occupation. CHAPTER XX. Golden Theories and Glaciers. The many inquiries that the author has received concerning his views upon the gold deposits of California, has induced him to add this chapter to his work. It has been said by an earnest and astute observer, that “The cooled earth permits us no longer to comprehend the phenomena of the primitive creation, because the fire which pervaded it is extinguished,” and again that “There is no great foundation (of truth), which does not repose upon a legend.” There has been a tradition among the California Indians, that the Golden Gate was opened by an earthquake, and that the waters that once covered the great plain of the Sacramento and San Joaquin basins were thus emptied into the ocean. This legendary geology of the Indians is about as good and instructive as some that has been taught by professors of the science, and as scarcely any two professors of geology agree in their theories of the origin and distribution of the gold in California, I have thought it probable that a few _unscientific_ views upon the subject will interest my readers.