rEBEUABT 19j 1915] 



SCIENCE 



269 



not be told here, and has never been so 

 fully told as the student of environment 

 might desire. Suffice it to add that no 

 mere paragraph can tell us what kind of 

 people came to Massachusetts, or Virginia. 

 Eeligious, economic and political changes 

 in England, plus the attractions of a fresh 

 world, brought across the sea the elements 

 that have been formative in American life. 

 American environment has not developed 

 all the qualities which we consider as dis- 

 tinctively or typically American. 



But in New England, and on the Hud- 

 son, the Delaware and the James, new 

 physical and social pressures began to 

 wield their power. After some generations 

 in this environment in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, a new flow began through the passes 

 of the Appalachians. To Timothy Dwight 

 is ascribed the view that thus New Eng- 

 land was rid of her restless and insubordi- 

 nate spirits. Another interpretation is that 

 the best and most progressive men went be- 

 cause they did not like the rule of the 

 Congregational clergy. At any rate, it was 

 another selective migration, by which 

 picked families went into a new environ- 

 ment. Turner is our best authority for 

 what the environment of the middle west 

 made out of the emigrant from the East. 

 It would be easy to show, I think, that in 

 spite of what might seem predominating 

 mixtures of Continental European migra- 

 tion. New England still pervades "Wiscon- 

 sin, that the New England mind was more 

 powerful than the new environment, im- 

 portant as that was, just as the Puritan 

 mind was more powerful than the New 

 England environment. 



The selective emigration moved on by 

 prairie schooner and transcontinental rail- 

 way to the Rocky Mountains, the inter- 

 ment plateaus and the Pacific Coast. Here 

 are mountains, deserts, mines, giant for- 

 ests, irrigation and a new ocean. Whence 



came the Calif ornian? From New Eng- 

 land, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado. Is 

 that all? Every one of the following re- 

 gions is there, with 5,000 to 200,000 repre- 

 sentatives. Germany, Ireland, England, 

 Canada, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Scotland, 

 Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Norway, 

 Prance, Denmark, Austria, Wales, Turkey, 

 Spain, Greece, China, islands of the At- 

 lantic, Australia. The German, Canadian, 

 Englishman, Spaniard and Russian that 

 wanted to be or do something new are 

 there. And it is a compelling environment, 

 of sky and mountain, ocean and plain, for- 

 est and desert, mine and field. Professor 

 Royce, a native Californian, thinks the 

 typical character there is a combination of 

 strength and weakness, with wandering in 

 the blood, lack of social responsibility, rec- 

 ognition of no barriers, desire for sudden 

 wealth, love of difficulty, unaccented love 

 of home, with more love of fullness of life 

 than reverence for the relations of life.^^ 

 One more picture of this western life 

 must here suffice — it is by a journalist — of 

 the American of the far northwest, where 

 New England and the Mayflower appear 

 not, whose men followed the Missouri from 

 Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri and Arkansas, 

 tall, big-boned, and stalwart, self-assertive, 

 nervous, quick in action, acting before they 

 think and thinking mainly of themselves, 

 their European origin so far behind them 

 that they know nothing of it. Their 

 grandfathers had forgotten it. In a word 

 they are distinctly, decidedly, pugna- 

 ciously and absolutely American.^^ Mak- 

 ing what allowance you will for Ralph's 

 exuberant rhetoric, and Royce 's habit of 

 philosophizing, better to be solved in the 

 twenty-first century than to-day is the 



31 J. Eoyee, "California," Am. Com. Series, 

 499-500. 



32 J. Ealph, "Our Great West," 141-42, 

 quoted in abstract. 



