DANIEL B. WOODS. _Philadelphia, July 1, 1851._ SIXTEEN MONTHS AT THE GOLD DIGGINGS. CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. California extends from Oregon to Sonoma and Lower California, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. It shows a coast-front extending ten degrees of latitude, from the thirty-second to the forty-second parallel. To the voyager it presents only high and forbidding headlands--mountain ranges which step down from the broad table-lands in the interior, and push a bold foot far out into the waters of the ocean. This country possesses 420,000 square miles, and is remarkable for its lofty ranges of mountains, among which lie interspersed limited but beautiful valleys and more extensive plains. Its diversity of climate and soil is as great as the varieties of its surface. The channel which forms the entrance into this singular country from the Pacific is two miles in width and three in length, and is opposite, under the same parallel of latitude, to the Straits of Gibraltar. After passing through this channel, the lowest of the series of bays, that of San Francisco, opens broadly before you, dotted with several islands clothed with verdure, and rocks white with their coating of guano, around and upon which hover and settle immense flocks of sea-fowls. Above the ranges of hills, in the east, rises the distant Sierra, crowned till July with its winter snows. The bay opposite the city is twelve miles wide, and, with the bays above, contains anchorage ground sufficient to accommodate every vessel, from the ship of war down to the schooner, in the whole world. In the north, the bay contracts into a narrow passage, and opens soon into a second spacious bay, ten miles in diameter. Still another strait connects this bay with a third, containing numerous islands, and receiving, at its head, the waters of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. These, with the Colorado, are the principal rivers of California. The mountain ranges may be briefly described. Fifty miles from the barren and sandy shore of the Pacific, and running parallel with it, is the coast-range, well defined, but not so elevated as the other more remarkable range. This is the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Range, which bears its lofty peaks, covered even into summer with snow, far into the sky. This range is one hundred and fifty miles farther inland, and also runs parallel with the coast.