106 REPORT ON THE STATE CABINET. 



wealth to a community, extending over any considerable territory, as the 

 crop of grass and hay which flourish best where those tropical or semi- 

 tropical productions cannot be produced to advantage, if at all. 



But for man himself, the bracing effects of cool air are necessary to the 

 attainment of the highest forms of civilization. Warm and moist are 

 the conditions of vegetable perfection; but cool and dry are the best 

 conditions for man's health and mental vigor. Now, I doubt whether 

 anywhere on the globe these contrary and seemingly incompatible condi- 

 tions are so well combined and blended as in the northern and middle 

 portions of the United States, extending from the arid plains, just east 

 of the Rocky mountains, to the Atlantic coast. The winters are cool, if 

 not cold, and comparatively dry. The total amount of water-fall for the 

 months of December, January, February and March, averages scarcely 

 one and a half inches ; and all through the summer, while the moisture 

 is no more than is needed for vegetation, the nights are, for the most part, 

 comparatively cool ; and seldom do more than four or five days of heat, 

 that can be regarded as at all oppressive even for us who are accustomed 

 to a temperate zone, occur in succession. Our position as the great wind- 

 gap of the northern hemisphere, to which I have so often referred, is 

 largely concerned in producing this oresult. The Rocky mountains leaving 

 the Cordilleras of Mexico, are not so situated as to shut off entirely, or 

 to any considerable extent, in the summer, the warm breath of the return 

 current and the moisture which it brings from the Pacific ocean and the 

 Gulf of Mexico ; while those mountains are so situated as to give us 

 invariably, even during the hot season, within every few days, the cooling 

 breezes from the north — such as scarcely, if at all, ever visit the inhab- 

 itants of the old world in our latitude, except, in fact, on the high lands 

 of Central Asia, where, there is neither warmth nor moisture for an 

 abundant vegetation. 



What these influences are to be on man's physical condition and 

 development, can be, at present, perhaps, only a matter of conjecture 

 and prediction. But they augur well ; they predict a glorious future — a 

 coming civilization such as the world has never yet seen. If man him- 

 self, in his intellectual, moral and spiritual training and care of himself, 

 will only do as well for himself as a kind and most beneficent Providence 

 has done for him, in the circumstances and surroundings of his earthly 

 life, nothing more or better could be desired than that which manifestly 

 awaits us. 



