further on) the coast presents a succession of inlets or channels opened by the impetus of the surf, and for these the Spaniards used to employ the word bocas or mouths.

17. Lago luncor or the Luncor (?) lagune. This does not admit of any plausible interpretation.

18. Costa alta or the High-coast.

19, Cabo de boa ventura or cape of Good Luck, Lucky Cape.

not.

20. Canpice-The p, as it stands on the chart, at first sight looks like an ƒ; and the reading would then be canfuce. Upon closer examination, however, the apparent ƒ will be found to represent a p, as this letter is elsewhere written on the chart. If it were meant for an f, it ought to show the long flag-dash, which it has No interpretation can be found for this word canpice. Probably it is of native origin. Ruysch, as will be seen, leaves it out entirely. The Ptolemy of 1513 writes very indistinctly: Caninar, and Schoener 1520, caninor. The explanation suggests itself that the copyist himself was embarrassed in reading his original text. The word did not fall within the compass of his linguistic experience.

21. Cabo d. licōtu.-The abbreviation does not admit of other and better completion, than that of Cabo del incontro, which means the Cape of Encounter, or combat. Ruysch has C. Elicontii. The Ptolemy of 1513 C. delicontre and Schoener, 1520, Cabo dellicontis.

22. Costa del mar Vacano.-Correctly recognized, but rendered in bad orthography, this inscription will be found in the Ptolemy of 1513 with C. del mar usiano, or the Cape of the Ocean Sea.

At this place the picture of the coast comes to an end, and by this last inscription our hydrographers evidently did not intend to express anything more than that their exploration and survey were stopped here on account of the coast and the ocean extending before their eyes to an immeasurable distance.

From this attempt at a correct reading of the names, we now pass on to examine whether these names may be made to disclose the identity of the places upon which they were bestowed by the Portuguese cartographer.

(To be continued.)

THE GREAT BASIN.

BY

WM. H. BREWER.

"The Great Basin" is the name popularly applied to a region of the Western United States lying between the Sierra Nevada and the Wahsatch Mountains. It has no one single character which does not belong to some other portion of the globe, yet it constitutes the most distinctive geographical feature of the North American continent. It is an area of interior drainage, that is, none of its streams flow to the sea. Such areas are found in the other continents, but this one has a combination of features which belongs to it alone. Even if this was not the case, from its position within our own country and because of its actual character, it has for us an especial geographical interest.

There is a large and rapidly growing literature relating to this region, but the most of it relates either to special features or else is a narrative of travel. I know of no recent and general description of the basin as a whole, therefore in this lecture I purpose to bring together items of common information and to consider it as a geographical feature of our country, rather than to give you the results of recent original exploration. My own work in the basin was done long before any part of its present railroads was built and was confined to the Western edge.

Moreover, the more important observations I then made have been published elsewhere in connection with the various scientific objects for which those explorations were made. I have only seen the other portions of it as the passing traveller sees it since railroads have penetrated that country.

But let me here say, the traveller of to-day who goes whirling across it by express train in luxuriously equipped palace cars, well supplied with all the comforts and luxuries of travel, and has abundant to eat and to drink, when trains reach their destination on time and distant friends can be communicated with by telegraph, and when the whole breadth can be compassed in a day or two; such a traveller, I say, can know little of the toils, the discomforts, the hardships and the positive sufferings with which earlier travellers crossed it; nor can he appreciate or even imagine the sufferings incident to the earlier explorations. The tragedies of those days seem to us as the creations of romance, and the tales of adventures and experiences seem as improbable as the story of the Arabian Nights.

Each of the continents has regions of interior drainage. Those in Asia and Africa are larger than ours, and there are various smaller ones, but the chief among them (unless it be the Sahara) so lie in the interior of the land that the waters flow from their borders outward to two or more oceans. Ours lies entirely in one continental slope; that is, it is entirely surrounded by land which is drained to the Pacific.

These areas of interior drainage on the various continents vary greatly in their details of character, and have, in fact, but the one feature in common, that none

of their waters flow to the sea. The term "Basin," which appears to have been first applied by Captain Bonneville to ours, has come to be used as a general term for them all, and is the descriptive term used in some text books in Physical Geography.

This use of the word is on the whole unfortunate in that it suggests a great error as to the actual character of such regions, and also suggests an erroneous cause for their existence. I find many people, otherwise intelligent, who have the idea, more or less vague, that the causes lie in the structure of the country, that there is a veritable basin or sunken area with a rim of mountains about it so high that the waters cannot get over the edge and flow outward to the great sea; that it is the rim which causes the basin and turns the waters inland to sink in the sand or evaporate from salt lakes in the enclosed and sunken interior.

This misconception has been intensified by the fact that most travellers who cross it, find on one side the Rocky and the Wahsatch Mountains, and on the other, the still grander and higher Sierra Nevada. To such travellers the region seems obviously a basin with high mountains on either side which seem barrier enough to hold back the water, and a sufficient cause to prevent the rivers from ever reaching either the Atlantic or Pacific.

The real fact is, that it is not a basin of which the rim is an essential feature. The cause is climatic and not structural. It is in the air above it, and not in the rocks beneath it; it is the climate and not the geology or topography that makes the "Great Basin."

Pardon this elementary talk, but it must be kept in