Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

1859.] Climate to the Consumptive, dec. 733occurs higher up in British America, these ranges appeargradually to run into each other. Both are coutinuous intheir character, and each presents a single interruption in itscourse, namely, the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, andthe perforation of the Cascade by the Columbia Kiver in itscourse to the Pacific. They seem to be providential, as if tofacilitate transit across them, and establish relationships betweenthe two sections on either side.This disposition of the mountain systems, reproduces the divisionsadopted in the first clause of our subject, namely thecoast and the interior, and it is in this waj 7 ", that we propose totreat of it. The coast is a continuation of that of California,and differs from it only in point of latitude, the extent of itsvalley formation, and its width. It will be recollected that theaverage in the middle parts of the latter is, one hundred andeighty miles, and in the northern parts two hundred miles.Here, however, we suppose that the average width, which isabout the same all the extent of it, is perhaps between one hundredand twenty -five and one hundred and fifty miles. Thecoast comprises a part of the State of Oregon, and also a part ofWashington Territory. The extreme south of this coast is animperfect plateau formation, and those few small streams thatare formed by the precipitation at this point, find a quick outletbetween the hills into the Pacific. About the centre of thiscoast line, the Columbia River discharges its contents into theocean, having passed through the Cascade Range seventy oreighty miles to the east. Between these two points, and thetwo parallel ranges, on the ocean side, is the Willamette Valley,the only attempt at an analogous valley district with that of California.It has a northern declivity, and takes its name fromthe river of the same name, which empties into the Columbia,probably fifty or sixty miles from its mouth.North of the ColumbiaRiver, no peculiarities occur worthy of special mention.Of the interior, which comprises all that expansive area northwardfrom Utah to the British possessions, and enclosed betweenthe Rocky and the Cascade Ranges, we shall treat under thehead of the Columbia Valley. It constitutes the northernmostpart of that interior basin, which Baron Humboldt declaredto be " the broad, undulating, flattened crest of the chain