The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))McGee, W J
History
The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))
McGee, W J
Seri Indians; Seri language; Yuman languages
2. Sierra Seri is a double range, divided mid-length by a broad saddle
barely 2,000 feet in height.[13] Like other Sonoran ranges, the nucleal
portions are exceedingly rugged and precipitous—at least two of its
picachos shoot so boldly that they commonly seem to overhang, and have
been called leaning peaks. In large part the precipices rise abruptly
from a symmetrical dome molded by sheetflooding, much as the insulated
buttes rise from the Bacuache fan in northeastern Seriland; so that the
tract lying between Desierto Encinas and El Infiernillo is a composite
of exceptionally precipitous and exceptionally smooth mountain slopes.
One of the Seri trails radiating from Barranca Salina lies across the
mid-sierra saddle; others push into several mountain valleys, and the
largest leads to Tinaja Trinchera, at the base of Johnson peak, where
there are a few low walls of loose-laid rubble, somewhat like those
of the trincheras (entrenched mountains) farther eastward—the only
structures of the sort seen in Seriland. Toward the southern end of
the range lie various trails, the most conspicuous paralleling the
coast, either near the shore or over the steep salients, according
to the configuration; while here and there ruinous jacales a few
yards from the coast attest sporadic habitation. The eastern shore of
Bahia Kunkaak from Punta Ygnacio northward reveals a typical geologic
section of the Sonoran province: the transgressing waves have carved
in the granitic subterrane a broad shelf lying just below mean low
tide and usually stretching several furlongs offshore; this shelf
is relieved here and there by remnantal crags of obdurate rocks,
cumbered by bowlders and locally sheeted with sand and arkose derived
from mechanically disintegrated granite; while the inner margin of
the shelf is a sea-cliff, usually 30 to 50 feet high, of which the
lower half is commonly granite and the upper half unconsolidated and
recent-looking mechanical debris collected by sheetflood erosion.
Sometimes the granite of the subterrane is replaced by volcanics;
sometimes ancient and firmly cemented talus deposits separate the
superficial mantle from the subterrane, as shown in the lower part
of plate V; sometimes the line of sheetflood planation passes below
tide-level, when the waves beat against the unconsolidated deposits in
a deep embayment; sometimes the sharply defined planation surface ends
abruptly at the sides of subranges or buttes shooting upward in the
abrupt slopes characteristic of the sierra proper; yet this 10-mile
stretch of coast is a nearly continuous revelation of the structure of
sheetflood-carved plains and of modern marine transgression. The debris
of the combined processes forms an abundant and varied assortment of
bowlders, cobbles, and pebbles, whence the inhabitants readily derive
their simple implements without need for studied forethought or manual
cunning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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