STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 75 



marvellous results which have been achieved are attributable less to nat- 

 ural causes than to our superior intelligence, indomitable energy and 

 profound sagacity. To these I attribute a liberal share, but by no 

 means the greater proportion of the immense progress which California 

 has made, not only in material wealth, but in all the high walks of civil- 

 ization. 



The true secret of our rapid growth in all that constitutes the real 

 greatness and grandeur of a State, lies chiefly in the fact that nature has 

 furnished us with a genial climate of unparalleled salubrity; with a 

 soil of unexampled fertility, diversified with beautiful plains, enchanting 

 valleys, undulating hills and rugged mountains — the whole being washed 

 on one side by the Pacific Ocean, with its healthful breezes, and inter- 

 sected by navigable streams from the mountains to the sea. When we 

 remember that these beautiful plains and valleys not only rival the delta 

 of the Nile in their wonderful fertility, but far excel it in the variety of 

 their products and in the salubrity of the climate, and that these rugged 

 mountains are not only covered with gigantic forests of valuable timber, 

 but contain within their rocky caverns hidden treasures which have long 

 since put to an open shame the story of Aladdin and his lamp, it requires 

 no profound political economist to disclose by subtle reasoning the real 

 secret of our unexampled progress as a people. Where nature has been 

 .so prodigal in her gifts, tempting the husbandman with such generous 

 returns for his labor, stimulating the enterprise of the miner with such 

 enormous stores of hidden wealth, and infusing new energy into the 

 merchant by spreading out before him the Pacific Ocean, with its sunny 

 islands and its distant shores courting our growing commerce, the won- 

 der is not that we have accomplished so much but that we have not 

 accomplished more. The truth is, that we are so absorbed in the daily 

 pursuits of business, in the fierce strife of politics, in the eager rivalry 

 for wealth and in the frivolities of fashion, that we but seldom pause to 

 contemplate the boundless resources of our favored State and to return 

 thanks to God for the goodly heritage lie has given us. Of all people 

 who breathe the free air of heaven, we have the best reason not only to 

 bo, satisfied with our condition, but to be devoutly thankful for the innu- 

 merable blessings which we enjoy. I say this in no spirit of exaggera- 

 tion, but as a fact which is capable of complete demonstration. Let us 

 see if it is so. 



In the first place, good health is essential to the happiness of every 

 human being. The poor invalid, pining on his bed of anguish, is blind to 

 the beauties of nature, deaf to the "concord of sweet sounds," indifferent 

 to all the appliances of luxury and art, and consumed with the longing, 

 eager desire for renewed health. In no other countrv can there be found 

 such assurance of good health as in California. With a genial, agree- 

 able climate, subject to but few variations in temperature, with an atmos- 

 phere of wonderful purity, kept fresh and sweet by the trade winds from 

 the Pacific, and with no summer showers to produce a putrid mass of 

 decaying vegetable matter in the summer months, it is not a mat- 

 ter of surprise that robust health is the general rule, and serious sick- 

 ness, except from constitutional or abnormal causes, is the rare excep- 

 tion. All strangers observe the beautifully developed forms, the rounded 

 limbs, swelling bust and rosy cheeks of California children ; and with a 

 climate so favorable to sound health and muscular development, if we 

 shall properly train the moral and mental faculties, the men and women 

 hereafter to grow up in California will furnish the first types of the 

 Anglo-Saxon race. The time is not distant when invalids from all parts 



