Ocean, and is situated at an elevation of 7490 feet, or only 480 feet lower than the pass of the Great Bernard. The emigrants call this culminating point the South Pass.[S] It is situated in a pleasant region, embellished by a profusion of artemisiæ, especially A. tridentata (Nuttall), and varieties of asters and cactuses, which cover the micaceous slate and gneiss rocks. Astronomical determinations place its latitude in the parallel of 42° 24′, and its longitude in that of 109° 24′ W. Adolf Erman has already drawn attention to the fact, that the line of strike of the great east-Asiatic Aldanian mountain-chain, which separates the basin of the Lena from the rivers flowing towards the Great Southern Ocean, if extended in the form of a great circle on the surface of the globe, passes through many of the summits of the Rocky Mountains between 40° and 55° north lat. “An American and an Asiatic mountain-chain,” he remarks, “appear therefore to be only portions of one and the same fissure erupted by the shortest channels.”[T] The western high mountain coast chain of the Californian maritime Alps, the _Sierra Nevada de California_, is wholly distinct from the Rocky Mountains, which sink towards the Mackenzie River (that remains covered with ice for a great portion of the year), and from the high table land on which rise individual snow-covered peaks. However injudicious the choice of the appellation of _Rocky Mountains_ may be, when applied to the most northerly prolongation of the Mexican central chain, I do not deem it expedient to substitute for it the denomination of the Oregon Chain, as has frequently been attempted. These mountains do indeed give rise to the sources of three main branches constituting the great Oregon or Columbia river (viz., Lewis’, Clarke’s, and North Fork); but this mighty stream also intersects the chain of the ever snow-crowned maritime Alps of California. The name of Oregon Territory is also employed, politically and officially, to designate the lesser territory of land west of the coast chain, where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti settlements are situated; and it would therefore seem better to abstain from applying the name of Oregon either to the central or to the coast chain. This denomination, moreover, led the celebrated geographer Malte-Brun into a misconception of the most remarkable kind. He read in an old Spanish chart the following passage:—“And it is still unknown (_y aun se ignora_) where the source of this river” (now called the Columbia) “is situated,” and he believed that the word _ignora_ signified the name of the Oregon.[U]