partition lines will be wholly wiped out. Among those who now drink to their fatherland, who now drink and sing their eyes dim, shortly there will be few who can trace the family name beyond the Golden Gate or tell from what country their great, great grandfather came.

Though not of one root, of one stem this people will be; and they will form collectively probably a finer race than any from which they individually sprung. The parent source represented the select manhood from the different nations; for the remoteness of California, the cost and dangers of the voyage, and the presumed hardships of life here, kept back all save the more hardy, self-reliant, and provided classes, and drew in particular the dashing and adventurous spirits. This sifting continues to a great extent, although settled conditions and improved communications permit the introduction also of less choice specimens, and the climatic advantages attract a number of invalids and indolent villa-dwellers. They bring compensation, however, in much needed culture and refinement, and in presenting for assimilation a superior class of women, so far kept back by the circumstances which eliminated all who were not prepared to contend with hard border life. The earlier female arrivals were of the robust mould, well calculated to bear a strong progeny; but mentally, and in social position and acquirements, they were inferior to the male pioneers, somewhat deficient in those finer qualities which above all win the admiration of the lover, the esteem of the husband, and the respect of the children; qualities which are particularly sought and expected no less in the mother than in the bride, since in the moral and intellectual home-training of the child lies the basis for its future unfolding and success.

From such excellent sources there is every reason to expect a race no less well endowed. Environment is of the most favorable character. Resources are so varied and extensive that they promise to stimulate

and reward for time indefinite the enterprise of the people. The soil is so fertile, and luxuriates in both choice and large specimens in almost every branch of culture; animals as well as plants grow so rapidly and produce so fine a progeny, as noticed alike in the now famed horses, in the superior sheep and in the ever improving cattle, that there is every reason to hope for a similar unfolding in man.

In the zoological unfolding may be sought an answer to the only questionable feature in the environment, climate. This is undoubtedly warm, and somewhat enervating in the interior valleys, and in the south where the main population will abide. Judging from the effect of such temperature on the southerners of the Atlantic states, for instance, there rises the spectre of a blunting indolence to thwart the efforts of the race. But the climate of California differs in many respects. The heat is modified in its depressing influence by daily breezes, during the season and hours when most required, and the sea winds are laden with tonic elements to which a varied mountain configuration impart variation. The assumed enervation is therefore counteracted here, and less applicable to the elevated table-land beyond the Sierra, or to the great Columbia basin, with its briefer summer and greater tempering rainfall. The dryness of California may prove another stimulant to nerve force. Her central position on the slope, the seat for an ever-expanding and vivifying commerce and for attendant industries, and also the vast extent of her sea coast, with broad avenues for interior traffic and alluring shores beyond the ocean, are all powerful incentives to progress, which should more than counteract the possibly opposing elements, to judge from the rise of Phoenicia and Carthage, of Athens and Rome, in a similar zone.

In due time, then, we may confidently expect to behold here, as now in England, the best qualities of several kinds in a compact oneness, which shall be of

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such solidity, such moral, intellectual, and physical force as to make its influence felt to the remotest of earth's corners. Certain elemental qualities of Slavs, Latins, and Teutons, have here married certain other elemental qualities of Teutons, Latins, and Slavs, and in the offspring we find a new diathesis.

Henceforth Californians shall claim an original inheritance, an original form of constitution. Her sky and soil suit certain temperaments, certain mental qualities, and bodily attributes. And the outcome will be a temperament something between the nervous and the sanguine, tinctured but slightly by the prudential qualities of phlegm. It is of no small importance for every nation to know its diathesis, whether gouty, as in the Teutonic races, or strumous, as in the Slavonic.

By intelligent anatomy we may discover whence California derives her temperament. The nervous she imbibes with the quickening air; the phlegmatic is clearly inherited from Teutonic ancestry, but from many a source does she derive her sanguine, buoyant, hopeful enthusiasm, such as predominates in south of Europe dreamers, in New England speculators, and French faro-dealers; though ruinous loss taught many early lessons, and kept society weeded of its more venturesome gamesters. It is well to be sanguine; it is better not to be too sanguine. For I have often remarked that those with whom success seemed a little doubtful were readier with their sacrifices to win it. The intemperately hopeful are apt to fall on grief. Misfortune usually attends the irrationally or excessively sanguine. Fortune sometimes favors the reckless; but he who plays his cards trusting his skill rather than chance, wins in the long run. Yet hope, although warping judgment, quickens energy.

Onward shall flow the stream of successive generations, tinctured as in times past by additions and subtractions, but midst all its eternal changes ever influenced by the original elements. Californians,

lapped beneath Italian skies in soft Levantine airs, will ever display the buoyant happy temper of the Greco-Roman races. To this will add his leaven the Spaniard, in lofty bearing and chivalrous honor; the Italian in happy contentment and love of art; the Frenchman in æsthetic tastes and grace, in delicate performance, etiquette, and bright mercurial manners; while the German and the Anglo-Saxon will infuse practical intelligence and enterprise and depth of knowledge into the fermenting mass. Meanwhile, the Anglo-American, by his shrewd common sense, sagacious adaptiveness, and far-seeing, far-reaching mind and ambition will make all his own.

From such race varieties, with their diversified talents, will spring painters and poets, inventors and statesmen. There will be multitudes in every department of letters and arts, industry and commerce; men of impatient enterprise, who will not rest satisfied until they secure for themselves and these shores all the advantages that other nations possess over nature and over each other. They will form another Utgard, wherein, like Thor and his companions, the new-comer finds no admittance unless he excel in some one art. With the acquired insight and skill they will multiply knowledge, and add, century by century, to the storehouse of experiences bequeathed by their forefathers.

CHAPTER X.

NATION-MAKING.

Da unten aber ist's fürchterlich,

Und der Mensch versuche die Gotter nicht.

-Schiller.

As friction generates heat, so business activity generates creative force. Enveloping the commonest labor of the early California period was a glow of inventive thought, such as attends only the greatest strides of progress. It was not unlike those outbursts of genius which attend revolutions and reformations. The first question California put to the gold-seekers was not, Is it moral? Is it legal? But, is it reasonable? Is it possible? There never was a time or place where the people manifested in mind and body such general alacrity and vivacity. It seemed preferable not to be, than to be inactive. The brain would work, if not in the right direction then in the wrong one.

Children influence parents as well as parents the children. In lieu of the way of wisdom, or force of argument, or the matching of experiences, they exert a less perceptible though none the less certain reflex influence upon their elders. Soil and climate act on mind; atmosphere, physical and social, acts on the manners and morals. On the sandhills round Yerba Buena cove, during the year of 1849, was hatched by artificial incubation a new species of society destined throughout all time to exercise an influence upon the whole human world. It was engendering which may in time prove to have been second to no event in his