Riverside and Finis. 309 



to introduce extremes. The temperature of our winters has descended to 

 lower and lower levels, and our summer has sniffed the clouds. Our rivers 

 have bfecome eccentric under the same influence. Within the last quarter 

 of a century the fluctuations of the Ohio in excess of former measures are 

 for flood height about ten feet, and for low water about three feet, making a 

 total variation toward extremes of fully thirteen feet above the record, say, 

 of 1850 and before. The same is notable in the Cumberland, and the Wabash, 

 and in all the secondary rivers of the Ohio valley. The Mississippi himself 

 is feeling the same tendency, though his volume is such as to make the 

 change more slow. Of course, the bottom circumstance in this unfavorable 

 transformation of climate in the Middle States is the denudation of the 

 country of its forests. To be sure, civilization demands the abolitiun of the 

 forest, but it is the folly of man which has demanded its destruction, neglect- 

 ing at the same time to redistribute the tree-growths of the country for the 

 preservation of original — that is, natural — conditions. It is a pitiable fact 

 that man, as it respects his friend the tree, has been a fool. 



Now, this general tendency to evil which we are experiencing in the 

 Middle and older States is exactly reversed in California. Here the work of 

 man and the progress of all civilizing forces are, in the very nature of the 

 case, working for good. Instead of cutting away forests, where no forests 

 existed the people of the Western States have, from necessity and instinct, 

 extended their tree-growth where it did not exist by nature. It is not that 

 they are wiser in their generation than we, but the natural condition of 

 their country has driven them to it. They are improving rather than dete- 

 riorating their climate ; not, forsooth, by forethought and purpose, but of 

 necessity. 



All this is traceable to one great underlying condition : in the Golden 

 State the mountains, and not the forest, are the fundamental fact — the 

 mountains and the Pacific ocean. The permanence of the mountains and 

 the sea, and the impermanence of the forest, are the natural circumstances 

 which have given them an advantage. Whatever modifications they effect 

 in nature are tending strongly to improve their climatic condition. As they 

 fight their way out into their broad valleys, which differ not much from 

 deserts, they carry with them, and introduce everywhere, a widening area of 

 better natural environment. While the people of the older States eft'ect an 

 unfavorable modification in the surface of the earth, the people of California,, 

 as a rule, effect, and can but effect, a favorable change in their climate and 

 surroundings. These, then, are the circumstances, I think, which may be 

 truthfully alleged to the advantage of the Californians. 



On the other side, a word. The country is very dry — too dry for com- 

 fort. In many places the sand is an enemy and the dust a nuisance. It 

 invades not only the habitations of men, but the men themselves. During 

 our winter stay in the State there were no high winds, such as our previous 

 information had led us to expect ; but there are high winds in California, 

 distressing winds that blow up clouds of dust and whirl them through the 



