Geography
The missionary, colonial and administrative efforts focused exclusively on the Baja California peninsula and the area of the present American state of California, although the inland regions of upper Las Californias was not precisely defined. The 1781 Instrucciones and government correspondence establishing and managing the Californias and Alta California referred to Upper California as the areas to the west of the Sierra Nevada and the part of the Colorado River that flows through the Pimería Alta. To the east the province was bordered by the gobernacion (province) of Sonora y Sinaloa, which included the settlements in Arizona. Further east was the province of Nuevo México. Because later 19th-century maps depict the Mexican territory of Alta California to include Nevada, Arizona, Utah and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, these are often retroactively considered to be part of the original Californias in popular thought.
Read more about this topic: The Californias
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)