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)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)